Unites States donates wheat to NGOs

Accra - The United States Wednesday donated 35,000 metric tonnes of wheat valued at 7.6 million dollars to three voluntary organisations in Ghana.

US Ambassador Edward Brynn handed the commodity to the Catholic Relief Services(CRS), Adventist Development and Relief Agency(ADRA) and Technoserve. The three will sell the wheat and use the money realised to fund their rural development activities.

Under its five-year programme covering the period 1997 to 2001 approved by the United States Agency for International Development, the US government will make available 73 million dollars in agricultural commodities in support of development activities being carried out by the three institutions.

The aid package constitutes about one-third of the total bilateral US government assistance to Ghana. The development programme focuses on improving household nutrition especially for children and mothers. Thus, about 20 per cent of the commodity will go into the direct feeding of primary school children in the northern part of Ghana where there are severe food shortages.

The focus of ADRA's programme is to enhance food security through training in agro-forestry systems and technologies, promote cultural practices that will increase crop yields for at least 11,000 farming households and provide credit and marketing assistance.

For the CRS, the focus will be to increase the effectiveness of primary education by improving school nutrition through supplementary feeding of 203,000 pupils in about 1,300 schools in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

Technoserve, a US NGO, will concentrate on providing credit for cereal storage and marketing in the Brong Ahafo, Eastern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

The credit will also cover palm oil processing and marketing in Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Central, Eastern, Volta and Western Regions.

Through these projects, Technoserve plans to assist 270 rural communities to produce or market 70,000 metric tonnes of food and create at least 15,000 jobs.