The Market Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP) and the Resilience Against Climate Change Programme (REACH), implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), on behalf of the German Government and the European Union (EU) have donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to support measures against the spread of COVID-19.
To date, GIZ has supported 17 public-sector partners and 25 private partners (associations, aggregators, processors, and farmer-based organisations). The procurement of PPE is an ongoing process and a total of 45 private and 17 public partners will receive support from the German Government and the EU.
Among the items supplied are 5,020 re-usable face masks; 212 gallons (5 litres) of alcohol-based hand sanitisers; 3,236 containers (200 ml) of alcohol-based hand sanitizer liquid; 304 jumbo sized rolls of tissue paper; 1,120 dispensers (300ml – 500ml) of liquid soap; 189 infrared thermometers; 102 Veronica bucket stands equipped with 40-litre Veronica buckets and 15-litre hand wash basins; 100 foot-operated hand washing stations and 5,229 sensitization posters.
The donation forms part of contributions to support both private and public partners in the North-West of Ghana during this pandemic. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, agriculture and many agri-businesses in the North-West of Ghana, as in other parts of the country, have been facing additional and unforeseen challenges. Thus, the EU and GIZ interventions to mitigate these challenges, to allow Regional and District Departments of MoFA to maintain support to farmers and agri-businesses to protect their staff and keep their businesses running, while strictly observing the COVID-19 protocols.
The beneficiary Regional and District Departments of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture are in 14 Districts and 3 Regions. These are 11 District Departments of Agriculture (DoA) across the Upper West Region, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba and North Gonja in the Savannah Region and Mamprugu-Moagduri in the North-East Region, and 3 Regional Coordinating Councils (RCC).
The Market Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP) and the Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH) programme which are being implemented by GIZ, delivered the PPE to the Districts, DoAs and RCCs on behalf of the EU and GIZ. In addition, MOAP supported 25 private sector agri-business partners with COVID-19 PPE whilst 20 private partners would receive their PPE subsequently. Both programmes are part of the EU Ghana Agricultural Programme (EU-GAP) intervention in the Savannah Ecological Zone in Northern Ghana.
