Opening the workshop, the South West Regional Delegate of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries, Prince Dr. Agbaw Takang, urged the 21 participants from MINADER and MINEPIA to be sincere with their demands. The workshop animator, Ngoune Edimo, in charge of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of AMO, exposed for examination, the records gathered on the field expressing the various needs. The AMO experts were on the field in the South West Region, for three months, where they met service providers and frontline agricultural, fisheries and animal husbandry stakeholders to assess functional needs in order to maximise production. Once identified and documented, AMO would put up a project to supply the material needs to MINEPIA and MINEADER offices.
The AMO programme is at the service of professionals in the sector of agriculture, livestock and fisheries to face the production challenges of the 21st century. Funded by the French Development Agency since 2008, AMO budgeted CFA 6.9 billion for its first phase running till 2011 in all parts of Cameroon. The AMO programme stems from an international debt reduction agreement between France and Cameroon for the revival of large-scale sectors of agriculture, livestock and fisheries. It is part of the rural development component of the Strategy Paper for Growth and Employment vision of the government of Cameroon. The initiative, acclaimed by the rural sector, is based on the Debt Reduction Development Agreement (C2D). The AMO programme seeks to reinforce the monitoring and evaluating capacities of the MINADER and MINEPIA in peripheral areas. They equally support the gathering of statistics, strengthen human logistic capacities in the hinterlands, and trigger dialogue among stakeholders. By the AMO programme, farmers, breeders and fishermen are better involved in the making of decisions that affect their occupation.
