Some stakeholders in the agriculture sector, have said though there is a huge investment in the procurement of heavy expensive machines, these machines are not always appropriate to the needs of the users and unsuitable for the topography and size of land cultivated by smallholder farmers especially women.
The participants added that these technologies are also hard to maintain and usually dumped when they develop faults, leading to wastage.The participants, including directors and permanent secretaries from Ministries of agriculture and Budget from states and the Chairman, House Committee on Agriculture, stated that the Agricultural sector budget is still bedevilled by late budget releases and policy inconsistency.
“Though the capital projects utilization in the agriculture sector in 2020 seems to have improved, it can hardly be said that these allocations largely affected the practices of smallholder farmers who were confronted with both COVID-19, herders-farmers clashes, natural disasters, late budget releases and crowd-outs by political farmers and contractors who are the budget first liners.“There is inadequate awareness and knowledge on the CAADP/ Malabo performance indicators by stakeholders .