The Transformative Land Investment’s Multi-stakeholder Platform, a multi-sectorial platform championed by SNV-Ghana, has advocated sustainable land-based investments to ensure effective utilisation of the country’s agricultural lands.
The Multi Stakeholder Platform seeks to coordinate efforts among state actors, land-based investors, traditional leaders, and other institutions towards increasing access to secure agricultural lands for climate-resilient and sustainable food systems.
The platform, established as part of the Transformative Land Investment (TLI) project being implemented by SNV, aims to promote inclusive and sustainable land governance in Ghana.
Members of the platform met in Accra last week to develop action plans ahead of the closure of the TLI Project in 2025.
The plan is expected to guide sustainable land-based investment in Ghana and ensure a resilient food system to aid the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal One-end poverty in all forms.
Dr Divine Odame Appiah, Multi-Count
ry Project Manager for SNV’s TLI Project, told the Ghana News Agency that the action plan to be developed by the platform would help to implement the various strategies that had been put in place to correspond with the timelines and duration of the project.
He said one of the major outcomes of the TLI Project had been the identification of five champions who had been used as model investors to other land-based investors.
‘Over the past two years, the representatives from the various institutions and stakeholders have had the opportunity to work with the transformative` principles of the TLI Project.
‘It is also an avenue for them to showcase to what extent they have been able to integrate these principles into their operations that borders on the principles and pillars of the Project,’ Dr Appiah said.
Mr Hopeson Agyapong, an Officer at the Inter-sectorial Network Department, Environmental Protection Agency, said the TLI initiative would ensure that environmental issues were prioritised in land-based inves
tments.
‘In most cases, we tend to lose most of our investments because due diligence was not done in some of these investments,’ he said.
Madam Ernestina Osei Preprah, Group Compliance Manager, Miro Forestry Ghana Limited, said land acquisition was one of the major challenges for land-based investors in the country.
She expressed hope that through the stakeholder platform, land-based investors would be able to engage relevant regulatory bodies to implement measures to address challenges in the sector.
‘We hope that this platform will help us to jump some of the hurdles we encounter in land acquisition and its related activities,’ she said.
The TLI is a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) project, with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Centre for People and Forests (RECOFTC), Land Equity International (LEI) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) as implementing partners.
Source: Ghana News Agency