Four school feeding stakeholders honoured

Four key actors of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) have been honoured for promoting smallholder farmer linkages to caterers of the Programme.

The awards were presented to the actors by stakeholders of the Programme including the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), and ECASARD.

The presentation was made during the 3rd annual learning event of the GSFP held on the theme: “Revitalising GSFP for Improved Productive Inclusion; now and the future”

The GSFP has been in operation for a decade and has achieved country-wide coverage, benefiting about 1.7 million children.

The programme has been successful in increasing enrolment and providing nutrition to pupils, but despite these successes, linking smallholder farmers to caterers has been the main challenge.

Another objective of the Programme is to boost domestic agricultural production using locally grown foodstuffs, with a target to procure at least 80 per cent of food from communities and smallholder farmers.

Mrs Getrude O. Ananse-Baiden, Programmes Manager for PCD, said for smallholder farmers to gain access to the market there is the need to explore feasible supply chains for GSFP and to strengthen the linkages between GSFP as a market with caterers, processors, farmers and grain banks.

She said various interventions have been piloted by development partners such as the WFP, AGRA, ECASARD and SNV and PCD to help improve the situation and the useful lessons from the interventions would be adopted into the Programme.

She said the essence of the awards was to stimulate and motivate school feeding actors to improve on the linkage between smallholder farmers and caterers.

The beneficiaries were selected from the intervention districts of the partners.

Mr Samuel Akpagure from the Bongo District received the best caterer award; while the best financial institution working with the GSFP to promote smallholder farmer linkages went to the Sissala Rural Bank in the Sissala East District of the Upper East Region.

South Dayi District Assembly was also honoured for being the best district whiles Jemaric Farms from the Hohoe District was adjudged the best FBO.