WFP launches programme to enhance nutrition
The World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a new programme aimed at eliminating hunger, malnutrition and stunted growth among children in the three northern regions in particular and the country at large.
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Known as Enhanced Nutrition and Value Chain in Ghana (ENVAC), the $15 million programme is being sponsored by Global Affairs, a Canadian development agency formerly called the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
The programme, which would run from 2016 to 2020, is projected to build on successes achieved with the Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme which ended this year.
At the launch of the programme, the Deputy Country Director of the WFP, Ms Magdalena Owusu Moshi, said the ENVAC project was an integrated nutrition and food security programme built on the P4P Initiative and other WFP interventions, using food-based approaches to improve nutrition.
She said the project had been formulated to tackle challenges with nutrition through a market-based value chain that linked small-holder and low income farmers to local food manufacturers.
Although Ghana had been largely successful regarding improvements in nutrition, she said a lot of work still remained to be done.
"Children with stunted growth across the country have reduced. However, in the northern regions of the country, one in three children has the condition. Anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies also continue to affect high percentages of children and women resulting in dire consequences,” she said.
She said a successful ENVAC programme would provide a model that could be replicated by the government and other development partners to achieve zero hunger nationwide.
She exprssed gratitude to the Canadian Government for investing in nutritional improvement initiatives, food security, education and livelihoods of vulnerable people in Ghana who had been food insecure over the past decades.
“Thank you for enabling the WFP to serve more food-insecure people time and again,” she said.
Beneficiaries
The Country Coordinator for the ENVAC programme, Mr Nanga Kaye, said about 10,000 smallholder farmers and their families were expected to benefit from the programme.
He said the programme would target two industrial food processors, 30 community level small-scale food processors and two community level small-scale maize and staple foods and flour processors throughout its life cycle.
According to him, the programme would create markets for maize, millet, cowpeas and soybean farmers and secondary markets for cassava flour, yam flour and fresh orange and sweet potato producers.
The Upper West, Upper East, Northern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions are expected to benefit from the programme.