Whatisfoodsecurity 101230065514-phpapp02

FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA:
AN ASSESSMENT OF FOOD SECURITY
POLICIES IN GHANA
Justice Tei Mensah
Department of Economics
University of Ghana
Email: myjumens@gmail.com
Presented at:
Joint Facility For Electives (JFE-CMAP), 2010
African Economic Research Consortium
Kenya School of Monetary Studies, Nairobi-Kenya

WHAT IS FOOD SECURITY
 The World Food Summit of 1996 defined
food security as existing
• “when all people at all times have access to
sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a
healthy and active life”.

WHY TALK OF FOOD SECURITY?
 "True individual freedom cannot exist without
economic security and independence. People
who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of
which dictatorships are made.”
-Franklin Roosevelt

 The recurrent global food crises of depleting food
stocks and escalating prices especially in 2007 has
led to resurgence in concerns of food security
particularly among many developing countries in
sub-Saharan Africa.
 Over the years trade liberalization has resulted in
cheap food imports from the developed economies
 Hence the issue of national food self-sufficiency
was downplayed and many developing countries
reduced food production, mostly upon the advice of
the international financial institutions (Khor, 2008).
WORLD FOOD CRISES AND FOOD
SECURITY IN AFRICA

WORLD FOOD CRISES AND FOOD
SECURITY IN AFRICA
The main reasons for declining food
production in sub Saharan Africa can be
attributed to:
 Climate change (drought and flooding of farmlands),
Rising input cost
Increasing diversion of farmland to the production of
biofuels (eg. Jetropha farming in Ghana)
Structural adjustment program

Focus of the paper
 This paper seeks to examine food security
in Ghana and the policies implemented to
ensure food security over the past
decade.

FOOD SECURITY IN GHANA
 The first national food security survey in
Ghana known as the Comprehensive Food
Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA)
was carried out within the period 2008-2009
by the World Food Program.
 The survey indicates that the three northern
regions: Upper East, Upper West and
Northern regions are the most food insecure
regions in Ghana, with 34%, 10% and 15% of
the population in these regions respectively
being food insecure.
 These areas are the poorest and the most
prone to adverse weather conditions, such as
floods and droughts.

Source: CFSVA, 2009

The CFSVA (2009) REPORT
 Over two (2) million Ghanaians are
vulnerable to food insecurity.
 5% of households (a total of 1.2 million
people) in Ghana have limited access to
sufficient and nutritious food for an active and
healthy living.
• This national average, however, obscures
significant regional differences, with the most
affected households being those in rural areas of
the Northern Savannah zone.

 Malnutrition rates among children are below
emergency levels according to internationally
set thresholds.
Wasting, a manifestation of acute malnutrition
stands at 7%.
Stunting, a reflection of chronic deficiencies, was
22%.
Underweight, a composite measure of acute and
chronic deficiency, was seen amongst 11% of the
children.

 A close associate of food insecurity is
poverty, which according to records is still
high in Ghana despite decreasing over the
years. The two tend to be intertwined and
create a trap out of which it is difficult to be
freed without the help of others
 Data from the Ghana health service shows
that malnutrition is the underlying cause of
55% of child mortality in Ghana.

FOOD SECURITY POLICIES IN GHANA
 Basically, policies to tackle food insecurity
in Ghana over the past decade can be
categorized into two main groups:
Emergency Food Security Instruments
Traditional Food Security Policy

Emergency Food Security Instruments
 The global food crises in 2007 affected
greatly the food and nutrition needs of the
populace.
 In the same period crude oil prices escalated
to a record high of US$137 per barrel,
increasing fiscal deficit and balance of
payment problems, thereby destabilizing the
macroeconomy.
 At the micro level, cost of living became high
(resulting from high transportation and food
prices) and the poor were greatly affected.

Emergency Food Security Instruments
 In May 2008, the government announced a
US$ 1 billion intervention package to mitigate
the effect of these crises on the people. The
focus of the intervention package was:
The removal of import duties on rice, yellow corn
and wheat
Input subsidies for fertilizer and tractor services
for farmers in the northern regions
Removal of taxes on crude oil and a further
subsidy on the pre-mix fuel used by fishermen.

Traditional Food Security Policies
 In partnership with donors and other food
agencies, the government has undertaken
some key policy measures to ensure that
the nation achieve food security in line
with the objective of achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by
2015.
 Some of these policies are discussed
below.

The Food and Agriculture Sector
Development Policy (FASDEP I &II)
 This policy was implemented in two stages:
• FASDEP I (2002-2004)
• FASDEP II (2007-)
 The development of FASDEP was
necessitated by the urgent need to
modernize the agriculture sector in fulfillment
government’s vision of Ghana becoming a
leading agro-industrial country in Africa by
the year 2010.

The Food and Agriculture Sector
Development Policy (FASDEP I &II)
General Objective
To provide a framework for modernizing the agricultural
sector and making it a catalyst for rural transformation,
in line with the goal set for the sector in the Ghana
Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS I).
Specific Objectives
To enhance human resource development and
institutional capacity building
Improved financial services delivery to the agriculture
sector
Development, dissemination and adoption of
appropriate technology
Infrastructure development
Promote selected commodities and improved markets
access.

NATIONAL SOCIAL PROTECTION
STRATEGY (NSPS)
 In March 2007, Ghana launched the
National Social Protection Strategy
(NSPS) with a mandate of providing policy
direction regarding the wellbeing of the
people living in extreme poverty and
vulnerable to both expected and
unexpected threats to their livelihoods in
order to reduce the incidence of poverty in
the country.

NATIONAL SOCIAL PROTECTION
STRATEGY (NSPS)
 The strategy was composed of four main
programs namely:
The Livelihood Empowerment Against
Poverty (LEAP)
The Ghana School Feeding Program
 The Capitation Grant
Exemptions for the poor under the National
Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)

The Livelihood Empowerment Against
Poverty (LEAP)
 LEAP was a program introduced in 2008 to give
cash transfers to identifiable poor and vulnerable
households as a form of economic empowerment
to meet their basic needs of food and water.
 It was meant to be a safety net for the 20% of the
population identified as extremely poor (GLSSV
2005/6; CSFVA 2009).
 The program provided cash transfers of between
GHC8 – GHC15 per household to 8,200
households in 54 districts.

Poverty (LEAP)
 It must be emphasized that the amount to each
household depends on the number of vulnerable
household members.
 To end the cycle of poverty and vulnerability the
grants were given on the condition that
households:
• Sends their children to school
• Not allowing child labor
• Registering family members in the NHIS and provision of birth
certificates.
 Following the effects of the food crises coupled with
droughts and floods in the northern regions, a further
15,000 households were selected for an emergency LEAP
(E-LEAP).

Poverty (LEAP)
 Characteristics of households:
• malnourished pregnant and lactating women, families
with malnourished children under five years
• female headed households without productive income
and small scale crop producers with few productive
assets.
• The World Food Program also complemented the
E-LEAP by providing emergency social cash transfer with a
monthly household food ration to 3,000 households.
• LEAP was indeed a crucial social intervention package for
the poor that reduced their extent of vulnerability to the
food crises.

The National Health Insurance
Scheme (NHIS)
 The scheme was established in 2003 to replace
the existing “Cash and Carry” system with the aim
of providing affordable health care delivery
particularly to the poor and vulnerable in society.
 After five years of implementation, about 50% of
the populace were enrolled on the scheme.
 However, the proportion of extremely poor
individuals registered under the scheme was
minimal.

The National Health Insurance Scheme
(NHIS)
 As a result, in 2008 the government granted
exemptions to children under the age of 18 from
paying the insurance premium
 Also free maternal health care for pregnant
women was also implemented to help mitigate the
rising maternal mortality rate in the country.
 This in a way improved the health status of the
poor and also freed up the income of the poor for
consumption.

Capitation Grant
 To revive the ideals of the Free Compulsory
Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) program
implemented in the early 1990’s and achieving the
MDG of universal access to basic education, the
government in 2004 implemented the Capitation
Grant which sought to provide free basic
education to children in poverty endemic
communities in the country.

Ghana School Feeding Program (GSFP)
 To fully achieve the goal of a universal basic
education, the GSFP was implemented to provide
a free balanced meal to pupils in some selected
schools.
 Objectives
• enhance school enrollment
• encourage attendance
• ensure retention and improve the nutritional and health
status of children
• boosting domestic food production.
 Funding by the Dutch, NEPAD and GOG

 Impacts:
• By May 2008, 477,714 pupils in 987 schools across the
country had benefited from the program.
• Increased School enrolment by 40% within the same period
• Reduction in hunger and malnutrition among children.
• As at July, 2009 about 640,000 pupils were fed in 1,700
schools throughout the country.
• It is expected that 1,040,000 pupils would have benefited
from the Program by the end of the first phase this year
(2010).

 Challenges of the program
• Corruption: An audit commissioned by the Dutch
government and undertaken in 2009 by the international
accountancy firm „Price WaterHouseCoopers‟, found
that after two years of implementation there was
“widespread corruption” at the program secretariat.
• Funding to expand the scope of the program to other
communities is not forthcoming.

Community Driven Initiaves For
Food Security (CIFS)
 Community-Driven Initiatives for Food Security
(CIFS) is being implemented jointly by the
Government of Canada and the Government of
Ghana within the period 2004-2011.
 It focuses on addressing three aspects of Food
Security: availability of food, access to food and utilization
of food.
 Results indicate CIFS is improving household food
security in 250 communities in 10 districts of the
Eastern Corridor of the Northern Region of Ghana
by supporting community-based and district-wide
food security initiatives.

Research And Development
 The country's agric research institutions include
• The Biotechnology and Nuclear Agricultural Research
Institute (BNARI) of the Ghana Atomic Energy
Commission
• Crops Research Institute
• Botany Departments of the universities
 These have contributed in developing high
yielding and disease resistant varieties of
crops to increase domestic food production.
 The challenge to them however, is the provision of
adequate funding for their projects.

Other Micro Projects By International
Agencies
 Non governmental organizations have over the
years played a crucial role in boosting domestic
food production and food aid to ensure food
security in Ghana.
 Notable among such organizations include FAO,
World Food Program (WFP), USAID, PLAN-
GHANA, UNDP among others.

Conclusion
 The foregoing gives insight of how various
government and non-governmental initiated
policies have contributed to ensuring food security
in the country.
 However, I am of the view that these policies have
not fully achieved their objectives and thus there is
still the need for government and donor agencies
to implement policies that will increase food
production and distribution in order to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

“A hungry man is an angry man”
THE END
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
ARE
WELCOME

REFERENCES:
 The World Food Program, (2009), “Comprehensive
Food Security And Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA)”
 Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) Ghana,
(2002), “The Food and Agriculture Sector
Development Policy (FASDEP I )”
 Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) Ghana,
(2002), “The Food and Agriculture Sector
Development Policy (FASDEP II )”
 Khor, M. 2008. Food crisis, climate change and the
importance of sustainable agriculture. Presentation at
FAO Food Security Summit, Rome, 4 June 2008.

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