The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) has been described as the “trailblazer” in Africa as far as the implementation and development of Africa’s Home-Grown School Feeding Programme is concerned.
According to Kefilwe Moalosi, a senior nutrition officer and project nanager at the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD), Ghana in the past few years has shown leadership in Africa and seriousness in implementing the continent-wide school feeding policy. The country continues to show clear signs of its commitment to reaching more schoolchildren, she said.
Moalosi said that Ghana’s success stories, innovations and exemplary leadership in implementing the school feeding policy has compelled her agency to make a strong case for Ghana to contribute sturdily to Africa School Feeding Day, which will fall on 1 March 2022.
Speaking at a technical workshop in Accra on the Home-Grown School Feeding Implementation Guidelines, Moalosi disclosed that most African countries implementing school feeding programmes do not have a fully fledged secretariat with skilled, competent and effective staff and management as Ghana does.
The validation workshop was supported by the World Food Programme (WFP).
Moalosi said that in line with AUDA-NEPAD’s mandate to generate and preserve knowledge in Africa, discussions are ongoing to develop a school feeding repository at agency to promote knowledge and experience-sharing among AU member states.
She emphasised the need to create a platform for a peer review mechanism and country exchange visits among African member states, and said Ghana will play a critical role in this regard.
Moalosi said the review and validation workshop on the Home-Grown School Feeding Implementation Guidelines, will help determine if the format for the guidelines is user-friendly, practical and easy to follow. The review will also assess operational challenges encountered in using the guidelines, determine if the draft covers all the necessary components of Home-Grown School Feeding implementation, and address common challenges experienced at country level.
Raising standards
The national co-ordinator of the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Gertrude Quashigah, expressed her profound gratitude to AUDA-NEPAD, the WFP, the Partnership for Child Development, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and other ministries, organisations and agencies which have supported the GSFP over the years to become what it is today.
She said the development of the Home-Grown School Feeding Guidelines, spearheaded by AUDA-NEPAD with support from the WFP, is a timely intervention.
The GSFP national co-ordinator said the document will serve as a tool to augment local efforts to strengthen implementation of the School Feeding Programmes, particularly in food systems and nutritional quality.
Dr Quashigah implored AUDA-NEPAD to consider Ghana to act as the host for the celebration of the Africa Day of School Feeding next year. Ghana is a pioneer implementer of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Pillar III, she noted, which is the anchor of the Home-Grown School Feeding programmes.
Dr Quashigah said since she took over as the national co-ordinator of the GSFP, she has been able to introduce measures to address the main challenges the programme faced, especially with regard to food quality, safety and hygiene.
Her department has also been able to increase the number of beneficiary children from 1,671,077 in 2016 to 3,448,065 in 2021, she said. It has also improved the nutritional value of food served to pupils.
“We in Ghana have developed a programme policy for home-grown school feeding. A draft bill is awaiting parliamentary approval and we are currently reviewing our operational manuals,” Dr Quashigah said.
“The GSFP has also subjected itself to assessment by independent external evaluators, and the recommendations of such assessments have been factored in to restructuring the programme as a way of continuous improvement.”
Benefiting more children
Emma Anaman, a programme policy officer for WFP, assured workshop participants of her organisation’s commitment to continue to partner with the Ghana School Feeding Programme to make it bigger and better to benefit more children.
She declared that children are the human capital of every country and any investment in their future is not a waste. Anaman highlighted the importance of the GSFP, which she said has ripple effects for every sector of Ghana’s economy.
“Over 10,000 caterers, 38,000 cooks and several local farmers are working because of school feeding; and it is against this backdrop that we at WFP will want to see the GSFP Bill quickly passed into law by the government to create more opportunities,” Anaman said.
The director of policy planning, monitoring and evaluation (PPME) at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mawutor Abloh, described the GSFP as a very important programme that needs to be sustained and expanded. He was optimistic that the guidelines will help consolidate the gains made so far, and allow others to build upon them.
The participants were taken through PowerPoint presentations by the independent nutrition and food security consultant for AUDA-NEPAD, Professor Josephine Kiamba, on the purpose and overview of the draft guidelines, on meeting the programme’s objectives and explaining the validation process.
The report on the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme implementation guidelines was drafted in Ghana in 2019 by member states. Similar workshops will be held in-person in Côte d’Ivoire and Botswana and virtually in the remaining member countries.
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