NEWS IN GHANA

In efforts to reduce child mortality rate or preventable deaths of children under five years, World Vision Ghana has launched an initiative dubbed Child Health Now Campaign which took place in Accra on the 28 th of January 2014 at the Mensvic Hotel. The Child Health Now campaign project which has been launched today was first implemented by the world Vision Ghana in the year 2012 to contribute towards improvements in Child and maternal health in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4 and 5. Speaking at the formal launch of the campaign project, National Director of the World Vision Ghana Mr. Hubert Charles disclosed the campaign is aimed at supporting and engaging the Government to speed up efforts to attain Millennium Development goals 4 and 5, especially to increase access of the poor to quality health services in the country. According to him world vision aspires, in partnership   with the government to ensure that children enjoy good health and are cared f

A new multi-year project assessing sustainable weed management technologies for cassava-based farming systems in Nigeria is being launched by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and its partners in Ibadan, 28 - 31 January 2014. The project is seeking to find solutions to the labor-intensive weeding usually performed by women and children and to increase cassava productivity for 125,000 Nigerian farm families. The project has the potential to serve as a livelihood transformation model for all cassava-producing states in Nigeria. Cassava is generally grown by smallholder farmers, who appreciate its tolerance of drought and poor soils. However, its prospects in Nigeria—the world’s largest producer—is being threatened by insufficiently developed weed management practices. Hand and hoe weeding are the predominant weed control practices on smallholder cassava farms and takes 50 - 80 percent of the total labor budget of cassava growers with women contributing more