The Daily Observer (Banjul)
Hatab Fadera
18 November 2008
The mayor of the Kanifing Municipal Council, Yankuba Colley, has called on Gambian entreprenurs to take up farming as a major investment.
Mayor Yankuba Colley was speaking to reporters over the weekend at the 45-hectare Jiramba rice field. This is one of the biggest of President Yahya Jammeh's farms in Kanilai. The KMC mayor had led a delegation of over 500 people from his municipality to the farm to harvest the rice.
Aware of the fact that large scale farming requires huge investments, Mayor Colley noted that the role of the country's private sector cannot be overemphasised. "I am appealing to the rich investors to take the lead and invest in farming.
This move will ensure the attainment of our food self-sufficiency goals," he stated. "In the western countries, many rich people are farmers. So I believe that we stand every chance to be like them if we want to," he remarked.
Commenting on President Jammeh's farming activities, the KMC mayor expressed his delight with the farming activities going on at the Gambian leader's farms in Kanilai. According to him, President Jammeh's move to ensure food self-sufficiency in the country is a wonderful one.
He told the Daily Observer that the president's main objective is to enable The Gambia to be an exporter of various foods. He further observed that the Gambian leader's clarion call for the people to go back to the land has paid dividend.
Mayor Yankuba Colley urged Gambians to follow the footsteps of the Gambian leader.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 The Daily Observer. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Yeah, Mr. major I agree, but will the Gambia government give the enterpreneurs the support they deserver? Peanut farming used to be popular until government started to ignore our poor farmers. Now our those farmers have to buy peanut if they want to eat peanut stew. What a disgrace to out government. Rice production should have been the focus of any Gambian president. We the land and the water is there (OMVG). Why can't we spend those millions of dollars being siphoened to the west and invest them in the Gambia? I don not care who uses that land to… [Read Full Text]