RIYADH: Work on the Saudi-backed rehabilitation and expansion project of Ghana’s Bolgatanga Regional Hospital has begun.
Ghana President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo led the inauguration of the project on Friday, with Saudi and other officials of the west African republic in attendance, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Representing the Kingdom were Saudi Ambassador Sultan bin Abdulrahman Al-Dakhil and Director General Mohammed bin Adhan Al-Shammari of the Saudi Fund for Development’s Department of Africa Operations.
A view of the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital in Ghana. (SPA)
The project is funded by SFD in two phases with a total value of $32 million through two development loans, according to the report.
“The project includes the construction and equipping of various buildings, including specialized medical departments, emergency services, maternity and pediatric wards, and emergency units. This aims to help reduce the spread of diseases and epidemics and enhance the level of integrated health care,” the report said.
SFD has supported 10 development projects and programs in Ghana through concessional development loans amounting to more than $124 million, aimed at enhancing sectors such as education, health, transport, energy and agriculture.
Under the project, the hospital will be supplied with modern medical facilities and equipment. (SPA)
About SFD
Since it started operating in 1975 and up to the end of 2020, the SFD had provided 730 development loans to finance 692 development projects and programs for 84 developing countries worldwide, according to the fund’s website.
SFD has also contributed to the signing of two financing agreements with the International Development Association, with a total amount of SR905.01 (more than $240 million), to bring the total amount provided by the SFD to SR69 billion.
Many countries in Africa have benefitted from the SDF’s soft loans. During the Saudi-Arab-African Economic Conference in Riyadh last November, the fund signed 14 new development loan agreements worth more than $580 million with 12 African ministers.
The amount is to fund projects in health care, water, education and transportation sectors in Angola, Burkina Faso, Benin, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Guinea, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
One of SFD’s projects for the continent is the Saudi Program for Drilling of Wells and Rural Development in Africa, which aims to sustain livelihoods by providing sustainable access to water resources.
Some 2,000 residents of two villages in rural Gambia had relied on this well for their water supply for more than three decades. (SFD photo)
Among the most enduring projects of this program are water wells in Gambia’s rural communities.
Safiya Saidi, a 50-year-old Mandinka woman from Gambia who has served as a caretaker of one of the SFD-funded water wells, said that her family and nearly 2,000 other residents of two villages had relied on the well for their water supply for more than three decades.
“Most people rely on this water well for years; it’s a source of water and food security for all of them,” she said.
