WFP supports school feeding programme with digitisation
The World Food Programme (WFP) has supported the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) with 300 Samsung digital tablets to help enhance the digitisation of its monitoring system to improve the efficiency and implementation of the programme.
The tablets will help track daily attendance and feeding in 260 schools throughout the country where the digitisation project would be piloted.
Advertisement
Real-time data
Aside from the digitised questionnaires which have been uploaded on the tablets, they also have pieces of software which will provide users with visuals to help them see and understand the data collected.
At the presentation of the items in Accra yesterday, the WFP Representative in Ghana, Ms Anna Mukiibi-Bunnya, said the digitisation of the monitoring system would provide managers of the GSFP with real-time data, which would be accessible to all users in a very simple visual format.
That, she said, would enable them to take immediate well-informed decisions to solve problems.
“In summary, the tablets will enhance the monitoring and reporting capacity of the GSFP as actual data on school attendance and feeding will be generated to enable payments reflect these numbers.
“This should lead to cost-effectiveness and savings, which can be used to expand the programme to reach more schoolchildren. This is the ultimate goal,” Ms Mukiibi-Bunnya said.
The National Coordinator of the GSFP, Mrs Gertrude Quashigah, expressed her gratitude to the WFP, saying that the tools would help the programme to digitise its monitoring system in order to ensure efficiency in the programme.
Challenges
Additionally, she said it would help in the programme’s quest to tighten all loose ends at the local level where the actual implementation of the digitisation project would take place.
Since the inception of the programme, she noted that a chunk of the challenges were the continuous use of manually generated data to make certain decisions.
Meanwhile, she said SIM cards had been secured and loaded with data for each of the tablets to ensure internet accessibility and easy data transfer.
Mrs Quashigah gave an assurance that the tools would be used for the purpose for which they were donated and maintained for maximum benefits.