Development of agriculture has been called the most difficult and complicated economic task that a nation can face. It is so because so many different conditions have to be created or modified, by different persons and groups of people. Thus for most of human history, agricultural yields were low and unreliable. This does not seem to be known by many people and they point with pride to the success stories of developed countries such as the USA. A delve into the literature, however, shows that it took the USA - when it was a developing country - more than 60 years from 1862 until well into the 20th century before it found a combination that set the stage for overcoming most of the difficulties. This long period that it took the USA to find a combination that worked shows that effective co-ordination of an activity such as agriculture is a major challenge for its success. At the time the USA found the right combination, globalisation was hardly known and the agencies involved in agricultural development in that country were few and mainly indigenous. Many changes have happened since then and globalisation now affects all aspects of our lives. But of major concern is the high influx of foreign donors into developing countries such as Ghana making effective, coordination more challenging. In 1982, World Neighbours an international NGO - in their book titled, ‘Two of Ears Corn', note that agricultural improvement among small farmers is a relatively recent experience in human history and that the resulting lack of experience with small farmers has been compounded by the tragic reluctance of many agencies to publicise their own errors or learn from the mistake of others. Subsequently, World Neighbours concluded that development agencies have not earned themselves a particularly impressive record in their fight against an extremely complex problem. It is now more than two decades since World Neighbours made this observation but the situation appears not to be changing. In a publication in the October 22, 2002 edition of the Daily Graphic, Mr Sylvester Adongo, the Northern Regional Director of Agriculture, observed that food security was far from being achieved in the three northern regions due to the lack of coordination among the numerous organisations that were into food security. This, according to him, had resulted in an overlapping of efforts and duplication of functions and interventions. CARE International (an NGO) also made similar observations in one of its publications titled 'District Food Security Networks: Experiences from Northern Ghana' published in December 2003. In their publication, CARE states in their work with community groups in the Bawku East and East Mamprusi Districts, they found that institutional support within the district from the District Assembly structure, NGOs, line ministers and private sector for farmers was unco-ordinated, making access to information and services responding to farmers' needs problematic and inefficient. Though these examples are mainly from northern Ghana, the situation in other parts of the country may not be different. In his book titled, 'Extension Alternatives in Tropical Africa' published in 1991, Jon Moris, a Professor of Anthropology at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA, notes that any activities which regularly require inter-agency co-ordination could be expected to become a source of managerial tension. Chambers, a renowned rural development expert, also once wrote in the 70s that while many wish to co-ordinate, few are willing to be co-ordinated. The examples from northern Ghana, however, show that donors and other agencies involved in agricultural development are still making the same mistakes made by their predecessors more than two decades ago. Those predecessors might, however, be pardoned for unlike donors of today, they did not have much experience to guide them. They may also be pardoned as the technologies for sharing information were then mainly pen and paper-based. But these reasons are no longer tenable. Since the early 1980s, advances in information communications technologies (ICT) have made it possible for microcomputers to become increasingly available and cheaper. This has proven very useful. Through electronic databases information can be made avail¬able when needed and in usable forms. And within extremely short periods of time, large data¬bases can easily be manipulated and exchanges of information can take place through networks of computers. Through such exchanges, stakeholders involved in agricultural development in different parts of the country will know what each one of them is doing for non-duplication of their activities and their effective coordination. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture should, therefore, set the stage for such exchanges to take place through the creation of an electronic database that will provide easy access to information on the activities of all donors and other agricultural development agencies. This is urgent and crucial, for, as noted in 1985 by L. Timberlake, a former Director for International Affairs, International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK, "Africa's biggest problem is too many people going around the country with solutions to problems they don't understand.' Source: K. M. Setsoafia/Daily Graphic