Ghana to pass National Food Donors Encouragement bill

Chairman of Parliamentary Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Member of Parliament for Berekum West, Hon.Kwaku Agyenim-Boateng has lauded the National Food Donors Encouragement Bill, championed by Food for All Africa program, and has pledged to support the development of the initiative. He inaugurated a steering committee made up of stakeholders from Food for All Africa, Food and Drugs Authority, Attorney Generals Department, Food and Beverage Association, Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Food and Agriculture to work on drafting the bill.

The National Food Donors Encouragement Bill is an initiative that seeks to institutionalise food donation in Ghana, create compliance standards and increase attention on the role of recovery and redistribution of food as a tool towards addressing the problem of hunger and inefficiencies within our food supply chain; particularly among street children, mentally challenged people and vulnerable communities in Ghana.

Speaking at the launch of the program in Accra on Thursday 15th June 2017, the minister expressed gratitude and lauded the organisation for championing such a “brilliant initiative”.

He added, “You don’t see this often and so I think we must encourage and support them. When you see young people trying to do things for Ghana you must be happy and encouraged, that is why I am going to support them all the way.”

He called on the youth to come up with life-changing initiatives that would enhance the development of this country, saying, “we would like to see more of these initiatives from the youth in this country”.

Hon. Agyenim Boateng also pledged to ensure that this bill saw the light of day and stated that he was “personally going to help in two fronts, as chairman of food and agriculture committee, we’re going to be sponsors of this(program). The bill will come to a committee in parliament before it gets to the preliminary stage for open discussions, so we’re going to work with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). I would also invite (committee members) of the ‘planting for food and jobs’ program, which is a vision of the president and a flagship program of the ministry to discuss how we can liaise with them and benefit from that program too, the essence of this program (food for all) is to donate food to the needy and food will come from excess in agricultural output so there’s clearly a connection, we have to work together”.

Executive Director of Food for All Africa programme, Mr Elijah Amoo Addo indicated his organisation's willingness to create efficient and sustainable means of nutrition for the vulnerable in Ghana through community-based initiative and reiterated their willingness to work with stakeholder’s in achieving it. He called on businesses and stakeholders within Ghana’s food supply chain to support food donation in the country.