ghana to invest in solar energy

The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) has decided to invest in solar energy farms to add about 40 megawatts of power to the national grid.

According to officials of SADA, feasibility studies have been carried out in the various catchment areas of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone (NSEZ) to make way for the commencement of the project.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SADA, Alhaji Gilbert Iddi, who made this known in an interview, reiterated the authority’s mandate to stop at nothing to execute projects and programmes in order to improve the livelihoods of the people in the SADA zone.

Accordingly, he said, over the past one year, SADA harvested several hundred tonnes of butternut squash, with majority of the produce exported to the United Kingdom.

Alhaji Iddi envisaged that the 2014 fiscal year might record a bumper harvest of the produce to meet the ever-increasing demand of the produce in the European Union (EU).

The authority, he said, distributed 270 tractors through its technical service providers to farmers across the SADA zone over the last one year.

He outlined a number of projects, including the Sisili-Kulpawn water management project, massive agricultural input support services to farmers and grafted mango seedling projects, as economic activities that were bound to impact positively on the lives of the people and eventually eradicate poverty in the SADA zone.

He expressed regret that although the authority was doing everything possible to enhance the socio-economic standards of the people, a few elements in the Ghanaian society were trying hard to tarnish the good image of SADA and what it stood for.

Alhaji Iddi, however, gave an assurance that the doors of SADA were widely opened for dialogue on projects or programmes that sought to change the standard of living of people within the SADA catchment area.