A six-kilometer road has been constructed at Nanakrom, located along River Tano, in the Jomoro municipality in the Western Region to facilitate mobility in the area.
The 2018 national best tree crop farmer, Mr Solomon K. Kusi, the Krontihene of Japekrom and Acting President of the Traditional Council, Nana Amoabeng Asare and the former assembly member of Elubo West, David Andoh, jointly constructed the road from their own resources.
In 2019, cocoa farmers in Nanakrom in collaboration with the three leaders began the project aimed at easing the burden of transporting cocoa beans and other agricultural produce to marketing centres at Elubo.
The 5,000 Nanakrom settlements, began in 1982, and it is about three kilometres to Gyegyekrom, off the Elubo-Takoradi highway, and have 3,000 cocoa farmers producing about 15,000 bags of cocoa per season. They also cultivate variety of foods crops including maize, cassava, plantain, and coconut. They also fish in River Tano.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghanaian Times, after a road inspection on Friday, Mr Kusi, also known as Kojo Liberia, lamented that poor and inaccessible road networks in Nanakrom had been a major challenge facing cocoa farmers in helping improve agricultural production, increasing income and boosting the cocoa economy.
Mr Kusi explained that due to the bad and inaccessible road network in the area through to the Takoradi-Elubo highway, cocoa farmers had to detour through River Tano on canoes and connect to Cocoa Town before getting to buying centres at Elubo to transact their business.
Another community leader of Nanakrom, Nana Awusi Adinkra, told the Ghanaian Times that cocoa production would not be boosted in the area so long as the farmer continued to carry produce on their heads to buying centres, stressing, “The situation remains a huge challenge to food production and security especially during heavy rains.”
Former Assembly member for Elubo West Moses Andoh, noted that cocoa farmers at Nanakrom had suffered for long and argued that “the time has come for us to get a fair share of the national cake”.
FROM CLEMENT ADZEI BOYE, NANAKROM
