He said the focus of their activities were in the areas of agriculture, energy, water, sanitation and hygiene.  Mr Banye noted that in the field of agriculture, the SNV was focusing on food and nutrition security, as part of efforts to eliminate poverty and malnutrition in the country.

He said SNV was operating the smart finance agricultural programme, working with cocoa farmers to improve on their productivity and working with shea butter producers in the north to increase their productivity and access to market.

"We are working with fish smokers to be able to improve fish smoking in a more hygienic and conducive way," Mr Banye stated in an interview with the Ghana News Agency during a press soiree in Accra.

The programme was organised by the SNV to interact with the media.

It was to provide the media with a first-hand information on what the V4CP had been doing over the past three years and also create an opportunity for them to share the development impact that SNV had been making over the years in the country.

The V4CP programme had been funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for five years in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Honduras and Indonesia. Mr Banye said the SNV had been in Ghana since 1992, and that, together with their national partners, they have contributed to the economic, social, institutional, and environmental development as well as poverty reduction, in line with the policy priorities of the Government and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

He said their aim was to reduce poverty and increase sustainable economic development through capacity building with local actors. He said with regards to the renewable energy sector, the V4CP was focusing on clean cooking, solar energy and off-grid electrification.

On water and sanitation, he said they were basically promoting access to affordable sanitation services and potable water.  "In each area we also have the various projects, and currently we run 15 different projects across the whole country where we are making significant changes in the lives of the rural communities," he said.

He said the V4CP programme was affecting many lives in the country in almost all the regions that they were working in. "SNV is touching the lives of millions of Ghanaians and we believe that other partners can work with us to achieve this agenda," Mr Banye said.

"We are well noted for our local presence and the core thing SNV is doing is in three main areas, that is advisory services, knowledge development and evidence based advocacy. "We believe that the capacity of people can be strengthened for sustainable development and that is why we spent significant part of our expertise to build the capacity of local organisations and communities beneficiaries to be able to champion their own development".

He said as part of their efforts to end open defecation in the country, the SNV was currently providing access to financial services for households to own their own toilets. He said they were also working with district assemblies to prioritise their development interventions.

He said the Government also needs to provide the enabling environment where development partners could work and be able to contribute to the development agenda of the country. 

Madam Sarah Naa Dedei Agbey, Project Consultant, Sustainable Fisheries Management Project, SNV V4CP, said the project played a major role in post-harvest improvement, capacity development, eliminating child labour and trafficking and gender.

She said with regards to strengthening the capacity of fish processors, the SNV instituted the Hownam Dialogue, which was a leadership and conflict management model for building the capacity of fish processors.