By Bright Kofi Agamah
Ever considered the bearing infrastructure has on improving diets? The International Center for Evaluation and Development, ICED, is embarking on research in using infrastructure to improve the diets and economically empower women in sub-Saharan Africa.
President of ICED, Dr. David Sarfo Ameyaw, said the research initiative will focus on three policy areas, which include the types and design of infrastructure investments and whether they are conducive to advancing the choices that low-income consumers make.
GBCNews’ Bright Agamah, spoke to Dr. Sarfo Ameyaw who said they have received a $1.56 Million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund the 2year research.
He said the result of the research will provide evidence on gaps that need to be addressed to help push African countries closer to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Dr. Sarfo Ameyaw pointed out that, in the first part of the study, the evidence gap map will look at existing literature on the link infrastructure has with gender and food and see what research has been done to link these three issues. “We seek to fill that gap so that policy makers can have the evidence to shape policies when it comes to designing infrastructure”.
We will also commission some exploratory studies looking at some of the government programmes, Using Ghana’s One village, One dam government policy as a case in point, he said “we will study some of these infrastructure that the government is building to see whether we are designing the One village, One dam in such a way that it can lead to availability, affordability and access to nutritional food and the role gender plays in the whole mix”.
The International Centre for Evaluation and Development President, Dr. Sarfo Ameyaw noted that a common feature along the highways in Ghana are the open markets operated by women. These women sell fruits, vegetables and food stuff. “The question we ask ourselves is ,when we were planning these roads, did we consider that this road will create opportunities for women to be able to sell produce that will benefit citizens?”, he opined.
He said there is the need to consider such gender sensitive infrastructure to make provisions so the benefits can accrue to both genders, and also provide access to food availability and affordability.
Dr. Sarfo Ameyaw said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant will fuel their quest to inform policy makers to be thorough when commissioning these types of infrastructure so that they can be designed and implemented with gender, women empowerment and nutrition being an integral part.