Dr. Jacob Paarechuga Anankware, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Horticulture and Crop Production at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) and one of the candidates who have successfully filed their nominations to lead the NDC into the 2024 election is wooing delegates and encouraging them to topple the current MP, Sampson Chiragiaa Tangombu, in the upcoming primaries.
Speaking to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, Dr. Anankware explained that when he is given the opportunity to lead, he will have a legitimate claim to liaise with other local and foreign partners to bring development to the Navrongo Central constituency.
“If I am doing all of these things for many organisations and other communities in the south, it is because they have given me the opportunity. I am the head of the department, and so I am able to write proposals. I am the country director of a certain organisation; that is why I am able to stand on that to get funding.”
“Here, I have not been given that opportunity. I am not a chief. I have no leadership role, so on what basis would I say, okay, these are things that I need for these people. My partners always say, okay, if you have identified all of these things, let us see how you can get a leadership role, and then we will be able to push in the necessary logistics. I am bringing my partners from Germany, and plans are far advanced for us to do things,” he said.
According to Dr. Anankware, many elected leaders have extremely selfish interests and work towards bettering themselves instead of the general population.
“I have realised most of the leaders we have elected are thinking of their parochial interests. They wait, when they are going on pension is when they go into politics. Politics is not for the weak brain,” he added.
Dr. J.P. Anankware attended Navrongo Secondary School (Navasco) from 2001-2004. He proceeded to the University for Development Studies from 2005-2009 (BSc Applied Biology), and served as a teaching assistant from 2009-2010. In 2009, he won a US$7000.00 grant with a scientific breakthrough at UDS for developing a natural control for major insect pests. He continued to the University of Ghana and pursued M.Phil. Entomology at the prestigious African regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science (ARPPIS) from 2010-2012. In the first semester, he won US$11,500.00 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further improve his previous research on insect pests.
Prior to his graduation, he worked as a consultant at Vestergaard Frandsen (Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research), Legon from 2012 to 2013. At Vestergaard, he established the largest insectary in Ghana from scratch; developed rearing protocols for major storage pests and conducted bioassays for the popular deltamethrin-impregnated ZeroFly grain storage bag. Paarechuga resigned to pursue his PHD in Entomology at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Nairobi in 2013 and graduated in 2016. Whiles pursuing his PHD, Paarechuga was the Deputy Country Director of Fish for Africa (an NGO specialised in rearing insects for protein in feed); he helped raised about €3 million Euros from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Swiss National Science Foundation and immediately resigned in August, 2014 and joined Aspire Food Group (An NGO rearing edible insects for human consumption) as the Ghana Country Director.
Dr. Paarechuga helped build Aspire Food Group from scratch with a US$1million grant from the Bill Clinton Global Initiative and the Hult Prize. He resigned in September, 2016 to concentrate and finish his PHD in November, 2016 and became the first and only entomophagical entomologist in Africa. Paarechuga is the Founder and CEO of AnePaare Farms (www.anepaarefarm.com); a global player in entomophagy (eating of insects) and a board chairman of Neat Eco-Feeds Ltd (www.neatecofeeds.com)
He was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan, USA, a 2017 Mandela Washington Fellow at the Purdue University, USA and a 2018 Humboldt Scholar at the Humboldt University in Germany. Paarechuga is currently pursuing his fourth Post-Doctoral fellowship at the New York University School of Medicine; focussing on Research Ethics and Integrity.
He once enrolled at the Oxford University in the UK and abandoned it to pursue other interests in Ghana.
He is currently working on a US$1.85 million DANIDA funded project on the nexus of agriculture, nutrition and infectious diseases among women and children and how edible insects can contribute to mitigating the injuriousness caused by iron-deficiency and anaemia.
He has successfully trained and empowered over 2000 farmers in the Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Ashanti and Eastern regions of Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Kenya to sustainably rear larvae of the African palm weevil (Rhynchophorus phoenicis), also called “akokono” in Akan, to improve their nutrition and income. He also rears larvae of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illuscens) as a cheap source of protein to replace fish meal and soybean meal in fish and poultry feed. This will make it easy for Ghanaian farmers to produce meat and fish cheaply.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
