The Northern Development Authority (NDA) has met with key development partners and private sector investors operating in the Northern Ecological Zone (NEZ) to help develop and transform the area.
The meeting held in Tamale, was part of a series of strategic engagements the authority scheduled to hold between 13 to July 30 with both local and foreign investor communities.
It will enable NDA harmonise and align the various interventions across the five regions in northern Ghana in the bid to create sustained synergies, explore opportunities, complementarities, and tailor interventions to increase development impact and effectiveness.
Chief Executive Officer of NDA, Mr. Sumaila Abdul-Rahaman, told Journalists the take home from the strategic meeting was to elicit the ideas of the investors as to how the Northern Development Authority can facilitate private investment to the northern ecological zone.
“As you are aware, we’re midway developing the Medium Term Development Strategy for the north and the pillar that underpins the strategy is private sector and basically we wanted to have that conversation with them to get their input into this particular strategy.
“We heard issues around financing businesses in the north is a challenge, issues of creating land banks also came up, which already NDA is facilitating, we heard of issues of NDA trying to become a one stop shop for some information that would facilitate private sector investment in the northern sector”, he pointed out.
The NDA Chief Executive Officer assured some of the issues raised during the meeting would be captured in the draft document of the development strategy.
Meanwhile, the Medium Term Development Strategy when completed will promote the shared approach to the development transformation and curb duplications of items and projects and minimizing risks.
In line with this, the NDA is expected to meet nongovernmental organizations and civil society groups working in the northern ecological zone to take their mappings and discuss how to streamline and define the points of focus for the midterm strategy to promote the coordination role of the authority in the area.
The Board Chairman of NDA, Dr Sulemana Abdulai, for his part, said the private sector was key in the pursuit of the NDA mitigating the socioeconomic status of the people and transforming the north.
“So the main reason for us being here today is to see how together with you the private sector players, how we can identify areas of mutual interest in our quest to transform the lives of people in the northern ecological zone” he added.
