Agro-pastoral Farming:

PCP-ACEFA Finances More than 206 Projects in SW

By Boris Esono in Buea

PCP-ACEFA, planters, insurance companies anduniversity students at the end of the workshop

The statistics were made known last Wednesday November 14, 2018 during the observatory family planning agro-pastoral farm enterprises in Buea for the year 2016 organized by the program for the consolidation and sustainability of Agro pastoral counseling, PCP-ACEFA.

                The Regional coordinator PCP-ACEFA Aloleko Fabien said “during ACEFA 1, 380 projects were financed for a total of almost FCFA 1 billion for GP projects while for PO projects, 10 were financed for a total of FCFA 109 million.  During ACEFA II, 204 GP projects have already been financed for a total of FCFA 955 million and 2 PO projects have been financed for FCFA 30 million.  In the area of counseling, 1625 GP projects and 30 cooperative are followed”.

                He added that the impact of financing and counseling can be seen in the activities of producers as their margins have increased. Hear him: “It is important as some producers can pay the school fees of their children and pay hospital bills when sick”. “We cannot really say everything is ok. Counseling is a continuous process. We are continuing to do the maximum we can do to achieve the objective ACP-ACEFA set in the beginning”. 

                Responding to the question on producer’s complained on the lack of funding from banks, the coordinator said “during our counseling, we called on producers to solicit help from banks to take care of their running cost. Inside the presentation we realized that piggery has some higher margin and if banks have documents to finance a project, they are going to recover their money and from the results can easily finance those projects. 

                To Takumbo Evaristus, Regional Officer in charge of Economic Activities PCP-ACEFA, there are a lot of challenges involved in the collection of data. “When you ask for data from farmers they think you want to give it to taxation to come and impose taxes on them. You have to explain why you are collecting information from them because it is for their own good.

                Talking to the press, Mr. Takumbo said in the ACEFA program, Divisions enter progressively that is, they do not enter at the same time. “Kupe Manenguba entered in 2016 and we cannot just put the observatory in place. Surely in the 2017 analysis they will be there. The report for 2017 is expected in early 2019. We are doing everything possible but just the situation we are going through that is causing delay. Even the 2016 project report was to be made in June of this year,” he added

                Guests at the meeting included: research institutions, Buea University Dons, planters and insurance companies.

                The 2016 reports from the SWR took into account five administrative Divisions viz Meme, Ndian, Fako, Manyu and Lebialem, with some 223 family agro pastoral farms (FAFs) followed. Manyu has 30 FAFs, Ndian 42 FAFs, Lebialem 19 FAFs, Meme 62 FAFs and Fako 71 FAFs.