The Northern Regional Minister has tasked Oxfam in Ghana to identify good policies under Savanna Accelerated Development Authority and partner state institutions, including what will soon be the Northern Development Authority, in the implementation of those policies.

Salifu Saeed said there is the need for this partnership with an apolitical civil society group for the development of the country.

The Northern Regional Minster who said this at the launch of the Oxfam in Ghana, a merger of all the Oxfam Platforms in the country, added that SADA had very good policies as well as data but had a problem with implementation.

Mr. Saeed said SADA will serve as a learning point for the middle and Coastal belt development authority, adding that there was the need for people in the Northern Sector to double their effort at catching up with the rest of the country when it comes to development.

The Northern Regional Minister outlined some of the challenges facing the health, agriculture, extractive and education sector.

Mr Saeed said even though there are challenges in these sectors government is not just lamenting but is putting in place policies to address these challenges.

He affirmed the Northern Regional Coordinating Council’s support in creating an enabling environment for NGO to survive.

The Country Director for Oxford in Ghana, Hamza Tijani said in 2013 the bigger confederation of Oxfam saw the need to merge all its Oxfam affiliates under one umbrella.

He said it is against this background that the three Oxfam affiliates in Ghana in 2015 began the process of merging under one platform.

He said the three, Oxfam America, Oxfam Denmark formally IBIS and Oxfam Britain, are now called Oxfam in Ghana.

Mr Tijani added that the three entities had a lot in common in terms of their thematic areas which makes the merger strategic.  

He said they had worked on three areas to ensure a smooth merger by designing a one country strategy which has components in the area of economic justice, agriculture governance, natural resource governance, active citizenship among others.

He added that a framework has also been designed to deal with the organisational structure and the country transition plan which deals with the transition of the assets belonging to the Oxfam group.

Mr Tijani said they were confident that this one Oxfam platform will ensure efficiency, adding that they now have offices across the ten regions of Ghana.

He noted that the merger will also help them make intelligent use of resources and be able to deepen their engagement because of their presence in the whole country.