The Daily Observer (Banjul)
Musa Ndow
2 November 2009
Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy, vice president and minister of Women's Affairs, last Friday, in separate but similar engagements, received in audience the senior nutrition specialist of the World Bank for Africa region, Menno Mulder Sibanda; and Yahya Ceesay, author of a book entilted: 'Women are nation builders'.
Sibanda, the World Bank's senior nutrition specialist, shortly after his meeting with the vice president disclosed to the press that the purpose of his visit to The Gambia was basically meant to see how the World Bank can engage effectively on the area of nutrition in The Gambia as well as its impact on children and women, amongst others in the country. He said during the meeting with the vice president they had also discussed the impact of malnutrition in the country and what The Gambia has done so far and the areas needing adjustment.
"In The Gambia," he went on, "we have already made malnutrition a priority and so we only need to strengthen partnership with the authorities in bringing it to the level that is needed," said Sibanda. According to him, this would be an excellent example to showcase within their own institution. He said this is what countries could do and then the World Bank can also come in to contribute and develop on their success stories. He added that every country has its own road to reach out to these targets.
He informed that Senegal is making success story and that they had the inspiration from The Gambia's nutrition sector. The WB nutrition specialist revealed that parts of The Gambia has registered success stories and that the World Bank recognised the crucial role in health, human and in economic development. He said the current president of the World Bank, Mr Robert Julet has reiterated several global problems that the World Bank is keen on and that nutrition has been given the key priority for investment. When asked by this reporter on how would the process roll, Sibanda said is just a matter of reviewing the current status of the policy and programmes in place and then see how they could pursue the project objectives.
The WB, he said has provided support to the nutrition programme of The Gambia from 2000 to 2005 through its multi-sectoral population project. "During this short visit," Sibanda went on, "we would meet with the United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Food Programme (WFP), and the Food for Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to basically come to the consensus on how this initial visit will lead to some of the technical assistance the Bank can provide in institutional and policy development. From this he noted they will subsequently see how they could capitalise on how The Gambia could also contribute in the fight against malnutrition and in its efforts to reach the MDG target for nutrition and child survivors.
He said this would also increase the awareness on mortality that has been calculated and estimated to having imapct as big as 3% of the point on GDP. Through that, we could know is not just a charity, that its really a development investment and that the bank has also realised that is important for nutrition and for the economic and global development of the country and against abject poverty. According to him, The Gambia has done a lot in nutrition, especially one of the front learners in doing successful policy development or nutrition and bringing down programmes to community level. For his part, Yahya Ceesay, a young Gambian writer who presented 50 copies of text books he authored, said he was at State House to present copies of his books. According to him, he did that as his personal contribution towards the Beijing Plus meeting to be held in The Gambia.
Ceesay added this book would accord the international women participants the opportunity to know about the stance of the Gambian women and priorities the government had given them. He said the book depicts in pictures and text the support the Gambian leader has been rendering to women in all spheres of activities in the country.
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