European Union

The European Commission (EC) -funded Northern Ghana Food Security Resilience Project (NGFSRP), launched in January 2010, to contribute to improved food security of some 10,000 resource poor and vulnerable small scale rural farmer households (about 70, 000 people) in the northern part of Ghana, has come to an end officially. 

The 20-month project implemented by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) UK in collaboration with ADRA Ghana benefitted about 130 communities in the Upper West and Northern Regions of Ghana with specific objectives of providing the farmers with improved strategies for dealing with soaring food prices.

The EUR 1.3 million-project ended in August 2011 and saw a drastic reduction in post harvest losses from 34 – 40 % to about 2% with up to 400% crop yield increases per acre over baseline figures for project beneficiaries and most supported households, while providing enough food for households to eat throughout the year and technology transfer.

In a keynote address at a workshop to evaluate lessons learnt during the project, the Charge d’Affaires at the Delegation of the EU to Ghana, Mr. Kurt Cornelis said the EU will continue to support financially Ghana in line with its commitment to respect international protocols.  “Due to the presence of improved governance systems, the current focus of the EU’s aid financial support / aid delivery is budget support instead of the project approach.  Thus under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), nearly 48% of the available funding under the A-envelope is devoted to budget support with special attention to continued progress on poverty reduction and economic growth.”

He stressed the need for the gains achieved under the NGFSRP to be linked to the wider agricultural sector to ensure their sustainability and asked for concerted efforts to address the major constraints facing agricultural sector amongst which are improved access to markets, agricultural financial services and improved rural infrastructure as well as enhances human resource and institutional capacity.

The Country Director of ADRA Ghana, Dr. W. Y. K. Brown, in a welcome address said ADRA had always been involved in collaborations to ensure food security in Ghana since food insecurity was a big challenge to most developing countries including Ghana.  He said ADRA Ghana partnered with ADRA UK which was given the grant to implement the food security project in the northern part of Ghana stressing that it had enjoyed good collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to implement impactful food security projects in Ghana.

Mr. Samuel Asante-Mensah, Agricultural and Food Security Programmes Director of MOFA and Mr. Isaac Kankam-Boadu, Project Manager, NGFSRP, in a presentation on the lessons learnt,  told workshop participants that the project had increased the capacity of farmer-based organizations in the communities with increased crop yields and reduced post harvest losses, reduction in household food shortages, the involvement of the vulnerable, especially more women, the youth and some blind farmers to engage in maize cultivation.  The farmers’ capacities were improved in marketing of agro-based products.  He concluded that the project has made positive contributions towards addressing food insecurity in the identified communities.

The European Union in 2009 launched the “EUR 1 billion Food Facility” instrument as its rapid response and immense support to tackle the soaring food prices and disturbingly increasing hunger in the world.  The instrument provided support to fifty vulnerable developing countries to help them cope with worsening food insecurity caused by volatile food prices by improving availability of and access to food.  Under the instrument, Ghana benefited from three food facility projects totaling EUR 5,710,000.