In Ghana, WFP focuses on reducing chronic hunger and undernutrition, strengthening the country’s capacity to reduce hunger, and restoring and rebuilding lives after emergencies.
School meals: WFP works with the government to provide 122,000 primary and junior high school children in 304 schools with daily cooked nutritious meals. In addition, girls in junior high schools are given take-home rations as an incentive to encourage girls’ education. WFP buys food for this programme mainly from within Ghana, in support of the government’s “home-grown” school feeding programme. WFP support thus contributes to improving education and increasing farmers’ incomes.
Nutrition programmes: WFP provides 60,000 women and children at risk of malnutrition with complementary fortified foods. In addition, a joint WFP/UNICEF project provides women’s groups with income-generating activities which reduce malnutrition in their communities. The project trains women to mill and fortify cereals with vitamins and other micronutrients, and sell them at a minimal profit in their communities. Women who live in iodine deficiency endemic communities are equipped to retail iodized salt. In addition, food security and nutrition monitoring sentinel sites have been located all over northern Ghana to monitor food insecurity levels throughout the year.
Local procurement and Purchase for Progress: In recent years, WFP has developed an active local food procurement programme in Ghana. Food purchases rose from US$234,000 in 2003 to US$7.1 million in 2008. WFP’s innovative “Purchase for Progress” (P4P) initiative, which is set to take off in 2010, will build on the successes of the local procurement programme, by connecting smallholder low-income farmers to markets, thereby enabling them to earn more money.
Relief and recovery operation: A protracted recovery and relief operation (PRRO) is underway, aimed at improving the food and nutritional security of people who were severely affected by a combination of floods, droughts, high food prices and the global economic crisis. The PRRO provides supplementary feeding to malnourished children, pregnant and nursing women, and food-insecure people living with HIV. Others will participate in food-for-work activities aimed at slowing soil erosion and land degradation in flood-affected areas. Food for training will target food-insecure groups that are at the highest risk of acute hunger. However, the PRRO is facing a resource shortfall. This means that WFP will not be able to provide the much-needed assistance to these vulnerable people during the seven-month long lean season which began in March.
United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot: Ghana hosts one of WFP’s five humanitarian response depots. The Accra depot is a rapid-response logistics humanitarian hub for WFP and the broader humanitarian community. It serves most of Africa.