Demba Sabally, new minister of agriculture, has doubled down on mechanisms to harness food self-sufficiency, as he held an in-house meeting with his ministry officials.

“Today our mission is a household name”, he said, while adding that the population is highly dependent on imported products for feeding and “it is high time that we started to feed ourselves even with the fact that our youthful population is migrating, coupled with challenges like climate change, and the degrading of our lands, however, our mission must still be accomplished”. 

“My focus is going to be farmer-centred because throughout the past 50 years, the Ministry of Agriculture has had a lot of information and projects on Agriculture, henceforth we will be having a farmer-centred mindset which means that whatever we do would be for the best interest of the farmers,” he added.

He said by acknowledging all the various presentations made leveraging on the importance of teamwork and said work has commenced and they must work together in order to avoid duplication of efforts.

According to Mr Sabally, he does not intend to work in isolation nor does he intend to get other people also to work in isolation while further imploring everyone to join hands and work together as a team in order to achieve their common goal.

“Being the minister of agriculture to me is a privilege and also a responsibility since our mission as a ministry is to make The Gambia a hunger-free nation which is not an easy task given all the challenges that we are facing,” he said.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba