By Deborah Asantewaah SARFO
In a bid to scale-up and strengthen the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA)-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has called for a collaboration between government, private sector and other relevant government agencies.
Elaborating the call for such a collaboration, a Senior Nutrition and Food Safety officer at AUDA-NEPAD, Kefilwe Roba Moalosi, noted that the existence of a strong partnership between government and private individuals such as smallholder farmers will ensure consistent supply of farm produce for the programme.
The organisation’s clarion call was made known at a stakeholder meeting with representatives from the GSFP, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, caterers, farmers and other key institutions to deliberate on the theme ‘Public-Private Partnerships and Innovative Financing to Enhance Investments in School Feeding Programs in Ghana’.
“Today’s meeting seeks to advance the Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme of Ghana by working with the private sector to attract them to invest in the Home-Grown School Feeding programme. This will ensure that both the Government of Ghana and private sector invest in the programme.
With the private sector, I am also referring to the smallholder farmers. Government needs to bring them on board to ensure that the school feeding programme expands or intensifies in the case of Ghana,” she said.
Additionally, she urged government to work closely with other key ministries like the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which can offer technical support and help in identifying farmers to participate in the programme.
In his opening remarks, the Head of Agriculture and Rural Transformation, AUDA-NEPAD, Dr. Clement Adjorlolo, also reiterated the need for private-public partnership, describing it as crucial to ensuring the success of HGSF.
He maintained that by working together, the continent can leverage its collective expertise and resources to develop a comprehensive programme that will address the multi-faceted needs of children from nutrition and health to education and economic empowerment.
The HGSF programme is one of AUDA-NEPAD’s flagship programmes under the food security and nutrition programme, initially Pillar 3 under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
AUDA-NEPAD seeks to support all member-states, including Ghana, to strengthen capacity, advocate and push for partnerships that are required to run the HGSF across the continent.
Data compiled by the AU report (2021) shows that approximately 65.4 million children in 51 countries now benefit from school feeding in Africa, a massive increase from 38.4 million in 2013.
Furthermore, the report shows that between 2013 and 2020, domestic funding almost doubled in countries in the West Africa region (from 37 percent in 2013 to 76 percent in 2020) and this external to domestic funding shift illustrates African governments’ increased commitment to school feeding.
According to the Operations Officer at the GSFP, David Essandoh, locally, the programme benefits 4,231,059 pupils in 12,000 public institutions across the sixteen regions and employs 12,000 caterers.
Meanwhile in achieving such levels of collaborations, Ms. Moalosi urged government to invest in the GSFP to expand the programme and make it attractive for farmers and other individuals to invest and support the sustenance of the programme.
The Director at the MoFA-WIAD, Paulina Addy, noted that aside from the nutritional benefit that the programme offers children, local farmers are supposed to be empowered through the procurement of foods at the farm gates to support GSFP within the respective locations.
She noted that unfortunately, farmers are being denied this benefit under the programme because the farm produce are bought from the market and supplied to the various schools, adding that “there is the need to refine these processes to benefit our children” and farmers as well.
To address the issues of procurement, Mrs. Addy indicated that there is a meeting underway focused on supporting policies on public food procurement to ensure that citizens eat healthy, and it includes foods for GSFP.
Her outfit hopes to push for the procurement of nutritious and healthy food options for institutions under the new government.
Mr. Adjorlolo also urged the government to explore innovative financing options such as impact investing, grants and cloud funding to boost the implementation of the guidelines for HGSF programme in Ghana.
Despite some success made by the country under the GSFP, Mr. Essandor, highlighted some challenges, including meals not tailored to meet dietary needs of children with disability, inadequate nutrient assessment of children and inadequate data of the programme’s contribution to farmers yield.
