Stakeholders embrace PIDMA to enhance maize production

Sustainable market oriented agriculture at centre of PIDMA sensitization workshop in Bamenda. Conceived and launched to help in the transformation of traditional, low yielding subsistence farming of maize into market-oriented agriculture with competitive value chains, the Agricultural Investment and Market Development Project (PIDMA) has been embraced by stakeholders in the North West Region.

Mayors, technical service heads and farmers in Mezam, Ngoketunjia and Bui divisions on May 13, 2016 started preparedness to give the project a chance. It was during a sensitization session in which the project’s progress report, prospects, constraints and challenges featured for deliberation.

It was against this backdrop that the Regional Coordinator for PIDMA for the West and North West regions, Frederic Yongue Simou revealed that project beneficiaries are cooperatives. The IDA/World Bank/government-funded project targets some 300 eligible cooperatives across the country, representing 30,000 households as direct beneficiaries of whom 50 percent are women.

It is all about increasing yields and improving production quality of maize, cassava and sorghum in respective production areas. Away from Frederick Yongue Simou, the Communications Officer, Joseph Celestin Dzokou stressed that the project which was designed as an inclusive Agro-business model, is based on pillars of competitive value chains, creation of direct contracts between small-scale producer organizations in cooperative with buyers scheduled to run from 2015-2019.

The Bamenda workshop also featured mechanisms for access to the financing of PIDMA, which is all about the process of preparation, submission, selection, funding and implementation.