Operations

Ghana significantly reduced the national rate of undernourishment from 64 percent in 1979 to 13 percent in 2002, while achieving annual average gross domestic product growth rates of 4 percent since 1997.

Despite this, Ghana still ranks 131st out of 177 countries in the 2004 United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report: improvements in national wealth have not trickled down to the poorest segments of society and food insecurity persists in parts of the country.The Government’s strategy for addressing food insecurity is based on shifting from subsistence farming towards market-oriented agricultural production to increase rural incomes.

The goal of Ghana Country Programme 10418.0 (2006–2010) is to support the Government in its assistance to hungry poor households to meet their education, health and nutrition needs on a sustainable basis.

This will be achieved through the two core activities: 

• supplementary feeding and health and nutrition education and 
• support for basic education.

Both activities are consistent with national Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Priority 3, which focuses on human development and the provision of basic services. With regard to support for basic education, WFP will implement a model New Partnership for Africa Development school feeding programme, under which the national school feeding programme is to be linked to local food production in support of Growth and Poverty Reduction priority 2 of increasing production and gainful employment, especially in rural agriculture.

The country programme activities conform to WFP’s Enabling Development Policy priorities 1 and 2 and Strategic Priorities 3, 4 and 5.

The intended outcomes of the country programme are:

• reduced malnutrition among at-risk pregnant and lactating women and children under 5;
• improved attendance and completion rates among schoolchildren in primary grades P1 to P6 and girls in junior secondary school grade JSS1 to JSS3;
• improved national capacity to implement and scale up supplementary feeding and on-site school feeding programmes;
• increased demand for domestic farm produce in response to newly created school feeding market requirements.

During the country programme, the supplementary feeding, health and nutrition education component will annually target an average of 60,000 beneficiaries; the support for basic education component will target 92,000. In addition to providing basic services, the thrust of the country programme will be to strengthen the Government’s technical capacity to replicate, sustain and expand successful model projects on a national scale.

The country office will ensure transfer of technical expertise and creation of institutional mechanisms at the national, regional and district levels that will guarantee sustainability. An important aspect of the implementation strategy for country programme activities will be to increase demand for local farm produce.

Countries

Ghana

Ghana is located in West Africa and is considered one of the more political and economically stable countries in the region.  Although it is still officially classified as a low-income food deficit country, over the past two decades, Ghana has made significant progress both in halving poverty from 58 to 29 percent and in reducing undernourishment from...