Cocoa drinks to be added to School Feeding Programme – Dr. Afriyie Akoto

Cocoa drinks will be added to the menu for the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has disclosed.

Addressing the media at a cocoa investors’ forum in Accra, Dr. Afriyie Akoto said this initiative by the Ministry is to promote local consumption of cocoa products.

“It is my programme as the supervising minister for the cocoa industry to promote cocoa consumption by targeting the young ones at school. So it will become part of the menu of the School Feeding Programme and the Free SHS”, he explained.

He added; “I cannot give you volumes [of beneficiaries] at this stage but we’ve taken decisions to promote cocoa consumption by targeting the young ones, catching them young”.

Recently, caterers under the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) received a boost after government cleared arrears owed them for the first term of the 2017/18 academic year.

A sum of GH¢88 million was released to pay arrears owed the caterers from September to December 2017.

This move by government was due to a report by SEND-Ghana, which revealed financial leakages in the School Feeding. The 17-page annual report established that delay in reimbursement of funds to caterers interrupted regular feeding and strict adherence to menu.

The School Feeding Programme is run by the Secretariat in partnership with international agencies like the World Bank, World Food Programme, Partnership for Child Development, UNICEF and the Canadian International Development Agency.

The basic idea of the program has been to provide children in public primary schools and kindergartens with one hot nutritious meal, prepared from locally grown foodstuffs, on every school-going day.