By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
Authorities and students of the Ejisu Senior High Technical School in the Ashanti Region have recommended the upscaling of the Fortified Local Rice Implementation Programme in all boarding senior high and basic schools in the country.
Ejisu Sec-Tech is one of the schools in the Ashanti Region where the World Food Programme is piloting the initiative, meant to improve child nutrition and learning outcomes.
The WFP is implementing this initiative in collaboration with key state agencies, namely the Ghana School Feeding Programme under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the Ghana Education Service, and the Ghana Health Service, in addition to Women in Agriculture Development.
A total of 157,510 students in public schools, including 46,263 in senior high schools, especially in underserved communities, have been targeted to benefit from the Strengthening Nutrition through School Feeding component of the programme.
To realize the objectives, the World Food Programme is supporting selected local rice millers to produce and supply fortified parboiled rice with essential micronutrients to schools implementing the School Feeding Programme.
Franco Food Processing and Farms at Ejisu-Ampabame in the Ashanti Region is one of four local rice millers supported with rice fortification equipment and fortified rice kernels.
The owner, Franco Obuor, disclosed: “What the WFP has come up with is that they want fortified kernels to add vitamins and folic acid to it so that when you feed that to the secondary schools or JHS, they’ll be able to get all the nutrients.”
He continued, “Last year, I supplied buffer stock and we’re expecting the next contract of about 45,000 of 50kg of rice to supply to the secondary schools.”
“They supplied us with machines worth $50,000 for free, from WFP, and then the kernels that we use to produce the local rice, also for free. The idea is that they want us to use local rice instead of imported rice,” Mr. Obuor said.
Last year, the WFP, through the local rice millers, supplied 170 metric tons of fortified rice, as well as 61.7 metric tons of parboiled unpolished rice, to nine senior high schools in the Upper East and Ashanti Regions.
The Ashanti Regional Coordinator of the Schools Health Education Programme (SHEP), Rev. Emmanuel Addo, disclosed that in that region alone, about 40 first- and second-cycle schools are participating in the pilot phase of the project.
The GES has identified malnutrition and anemia as major challenges confronting school children.
According to him, reports of a survey by the Ghana Health Service and others in the schools, particularly those in underserved communities, have revealed a prevalence of malnutrition and obesity among the students, a situation that has encouraged the GES to partner with the WFP in this initiative.
Among the beneficiary schools is Ejisu Sec-Tech.
Peter Babere and Edna Owusu, both final-year students of the school, shared their experiences with the media.
“When it was introduced to us, the officials told us about the nutrients that it carries, and when we also tasted it, I felt some experiences in my body, so I got to know that it was very nutritious,” he narrated.
“I think this rice that we’re consuming now is better than the one we used to consume,” Edna Owusu Beauty said.
They said initially, students were reluctant to accept the parboiled rice, but now they like it more than the polished rice they had always cherished.
The Headmistress, Mrs. Grace Asamani, urged the Ghana Education Service to extend the programme to all boarding schools in the country.
“We’re still in talks with the WFP so that they talk to the powers that be, so that they can come back, because of the nutritional value. We even pray that almost every school will get something like this, so that our students’ nutrition would be enhanced,” she said.
The World Food Programme is implementing the programme with funding support from the Commonwealth and Development Office.
