Ghana needs well-coordinated policies on food systems to ensure food security, improve nutrition and enhance food safety, Professor Felix Ankomah Asante, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research, Innovation and Development, University of Ghana, has said.
He noted that, over the years, institutions like the Ministry of Health and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), had developed several policies on food systems to regulate the sector to address issues of food security, improve nutrition and enhance food safety in Ghana.
However, he said, those policies had not yielded the required results because they had been implemented in silos without recourse to similar policies.
Speaking in an interview with the media on the sidelines of an inception workshop on a project dubbed: “Strengthening National Capacities and Policies for Food System Analysis and Transformation in Ghana”, in Accra, Prof Asante called for collaboration among key stakeholders – public and private – to ensure that existing policies on food systems were integrated to achieve the required impact.
“We have policies, but what is happening is that the policies are in silos. The Ministry of Health has its food safety policy, Food and Drugs Authority has its quality and whatever policy, but we need a system or someone, who will help coordinate these policies.
“The policies cannot sit on their own,” he said.
The workshop was to introduce the project to stakeholders and to solicit collaboration with institutions working in the area of Food Systems in Ghana.
The three-year project, which was initially planned to commence in 2022, is expected to end in the second quarter of 2024, and aimed at strengthening national capacities and policies for sustainable food systems transformation in Africa.
Also, it is to ensure that food systems deliver multiple outcomes including food security, nutrition, food safety, equity, resilience, sustainability, and human and environmental health for all the people.
It is being carried out in two other African countries – Kenya and Senegal – with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, as implementing agencies.
It is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the International Development Research Centre, Canada.
Prof Asante explained that food systems touched every aspect of human life, noting that “when you talk about food systems you don’t know where Ministries of Road and Transport end and Agriculture comes in, and you don’t know where the Ministry of Health ends and other ministries come in.
“They all have to work together, but currently everybody’s working separately and that is very, very serious.”
He urged the government to also tackle transportation challenges in the country to address the issues of post-harvest losses.
On the project, Prof Asante, who is the Project Lead for Ghana’s part, said the Project had four main areas, including overview of food systems transformation processes, country team formation, and inception workshop; food system diagnostics and tools; analysis of food systems trade-offs and options, gender integration, and food system transformation pathways (FSTP) and stakeholder and policy engagement on FSTP.
The project, he added, would also be delivered in partnership with seven key institutions namely the Ministry of Health, National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the Ghana Statistical Service, the Women in Agriculture Directorate and the Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, both of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana.
“We hope that the tools that we will generate will help address Ghana’s food systems,” Prof Asante added.
He called for capacity building for policymakers to enable them to understand what food systems were and ensure that they effectively delivered on their mandates.
Mr Seth Asante, Country Representative, IFPRI, said the IFPRI chose the three countries because of their unique trait as it sought to explore and understand the diversity across East Africa, West Africa and also the francophone countries.
He added that the project would be extended to other African countries to help address challenges within the food systems.
Source: GNA