Former President John Dramani Mahama has admitted that his government made mistakes in buying tractors for farmers during his tenure as President.
Mr Mahama says that given another chance, he will rather buy the tractors, and put them in a pool for someone with the expertise to manage and provide the tractor services to farmers.
“I realised some of the things that we did, we made mistakes, we imported tractors and agricultural equipment, and we gave it to farmers. The farmer does not need the tractor, he does not need the agricultural equipment, he needs the services of a tractor,” the former President said in Munich.
The former President added “so somebody who knows how to maintain that tractor must have a service centre, where he provides the services to the farmer. But we gave the tractors to the farmers, and in a year or two the tractor had broken down because he [farmer] doesn’t know that every six months you must change the engine oil, you must change the filters, you must grease the tractor, he [farmer] doesn’t know that. So we will approach it differently.
Former President Mahama is in Munich, Germany, attending the 59th Munich Security Conference 2023. The conference provides a platform for high-level debates “on key foreign and security policy challenges.”
Mr Mahama is the Chairperson of the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa. The Tana Forum in collaboration with Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie e.V. (BDI) on Saturday, hosted a side event, an MSC Regional Breakfast on “Africa’s Place in a multipolar world: Moving from strategy to action.”
The session was opened by President Mahama as Chair of the Tana Forum and addressed by the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, and Wolfgang Niedermark of BDI, the Federation of German Industries.
South Africa’s Minister for Defence, Thandi Modise, delivered the keynote remarks.