By Fatou Sillah
President Adama Barrow on Monday laid the foundation stone for the construction of a USET Agribusiness training centre in Kerewan Mandinka.
The centre sponsored by MRC Holland Foundation, would consist of poultry, aquaculture, horticulture, field-crops, agric machinery, among others.
Speaking at the ceremony President Barrow expressed happiness with the project.
“I am very happy and very excited today, because this is my dream. We cannot develop our country without training the people. Capacity building is very important. That’s why we have to train our youth. We have to be skillful to make sure that we develop this country, and today, we have accepted it as a policy. And the Minister and his team are very supportive, pushing every day, and night to make sure that we realise our dream.
“This is now the beginning. We have laid the foundation stone, but we will call on the community to continue to support, and also to encourage their children to come and enroll in this institution. We have to benefit and the community to benefit,” he said.
Barrow added that if the people are serious about development we have to be serious about agriculture.
Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science, and Technology, Prof. Pierre Gomez said the Agro business centre would address rural-urban migration and the irregular international migration.
He stated that the centre when constructed would encourage youth to stay in their settlement and get first class education.
Henrietta Sonko, Country Coordinator for MRC Holland Foundation, advised people to depart from urban centres where it is so congested and move to the rural areas where there is healthy free space and a lot can be done to develop the country.
The development came as the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science, and Technology is poised at transforming and decentralising some of the public tertiary and higher education institutions to meet its core mandate of building the human capital stock of The Gambia.