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Mr Yaw Effah Baafi, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in Charge of Crops, on Monday urged operatives in the agriculture sector to ensure the implementation of self-sustaining development programmes. "Sharing and learning our successes so that they can be replicated, failures so that they are not repeated and engaging in policy dialogue to inform better policy making can contribute significantly to the achievement of the desired outcomes," he said. Mr Effah Baafi made the call in an address at the opening of a three-day Anglophone Regional Training workshop on documenting experience and innovation capitalisation methods. It is being organised by the West Africa Rural Foundation (WARF), an international non-profit organisation on the theme:"Promotion of Knowledge and Innovation Sharing for Rural Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa." WARF is a partner of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and manages some programmes of the Fund such as IFAD Africa Network. The overall aim of the IFAD Africa Network is to bring together people, organisations and networks to facilitate learning, knowledge and innovation sharing with a view to reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The workshop is being attended by 30 participants who are staff from 10 project centres in Ghana, Gambia and Nigeria. Mr Effah Baafi said the large numbers of populations involved in agriculture and the existence of huge potential productivity gaps that could be exploited should be the focus of development actors who are fighting for growth in agriculture and an increase in poverty reduction. "The food crisis together with the fuel and financial crisis has derailed efforts of countries in achieving economic development and Millennium Development Goals. "The need to intensify the fight against poverty has become urgent and more pressing lately as we all witnessed the recent food crisis that threatened political stability." He called for concerted efforts to address the issue of climate change since it would derail the efforts being made to increase productivity in agriculture to reduce poverty. Mr Effah Baafi urged the participants to make effective deliberations that would enable them to acquire new knowledge and skills for successful implementation of various programmes. In an address read on his behalf by Mr. Abdou Fall, Co-ordinator of FIDAFRIQUE project at WARF, Mrs Ndeye Coumba Fall, Executive Director of WARF, said the objective of the workshop was to strengthen the capacity of network members on knowledge capturing, documentation and dissemination. This is to improve policy dialogue processes and content by making available relevant information and knowledge drawn from project and programme experiences for decision makers, leaders of farmers and other stakeholders.