FOOD SECURITY: NETWORK WARNS OF ROADBLOCKS TO INTERVENTIONS

FOOD SECURITY: NETWORK WARNS OF ROADBLOCKS TO INTERVENTIONS

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

The Food Security Policy Advocacy Network (FoodSPAN) has come up with five threats that could see many poor Ghanaians remain in the quagmire of hunger and malnutrition despite the introduction of the Medium-Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plan (METASIP) under the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union (AU)’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

FoodSPAN is a Ghana-based coalition of civil society organisations with a mission to ensure that every Ghanaian has a regular access to adequate nutritious food that is socially and culturally acceptable and consistent with respect to human dignity.

In a statement issued to wrap up its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Bolgatanga, the network acknowledged the CAADP/METASIP target to achieve at least 6% growth rate with at least 10% of total national budget allocation in agriculture to implement the Food and Agriculture Development Sector Policy Phase II (FASDEP II), but warned that the execution of the plan could hit a snag unless measures were taken to forestall any fiasco.

Spelling out the five threats in a post-AGM press briefing, Mrs.Queronica Quarley Quartey, FoodSPAN Coordinator who doubles as Right to Food and Climate Change Policy Advisor, said the network had noticed that there had been lack of awareness of METASIP not only among civil society organisations and their constituents but also among staff of the sector ministry, departments and agencies. It also expressed fears about the tendency that CAADP/METASIP, like the other major agricultural programmes, to promote more cash crops with export-led agricultural policies to the detriment of the vulnerable, the poor and smallholder farmers.

The statement also warned that the silence of METASIP on the triple roles of women (as in income, household and community work) could hinder the envisaged rural transformation and poverty reduction that FASDEP I was to achieve. Whilst pointing at funding gap in the METASIP as the fourth problem, the network also expressed worry about the cross-sectoral nature of the CAADP/METASIP as it is a country-led process with more inclusive multi-stakeholder representation including non-state actors like civil society organisations as well as farmers and their organisations.   

Suggesting the way forward, the network demanded: “We call on the coordinating sector ministry, key stakeholders in the METASIP implementation and governance structures to empower stakeholders for effective communication and engagement. We demand that the METASIP categorically indicate how the concerns and needs of the vulnerable, poor and smallholder farmers are being addressed, especially regarding resource allocation. We call in strongest terms that conscious concerted efforts should be made towards ensuring that METASIP is made gender-sensitive in all aspects. We demand that resource flow to smallholder and women farmers and the food sub-sector should not suffer. And we demand some clarity in terms of how issues of cross-sectoral nature of the CAADP/METASIP can be effectively addressed since these go beyond the mandate of the agriculture sector.”

Members also resolved to create and intensify awareness with vigilance on CAADP/METASIP to ensure that voices of the vulnerable, poor and smallholders, especially women, are heard very loudly in policies and programmes pertaining to food security and poverty reduction. They gave the assurance that they would continue to advocate for categorical breakdown of all the figures in the agriculture budget to provide the evidence of how much resource allocation is meant to address food security.

“We shall embark on grassroots collaborative monitoring and evaluation of existing sector programmes and projects such as the block farming, input/fertiliser subsidy, buffer stock and many others embraced in the CAADP/METASIP framework, to ascertain how they are implemented to benefit smallholder farmers, with the view to promoting climate change resilient and sustainable agriculture,” the statement affirmed.

Among the notable participants at the AGM were Mr. Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah, Chairman of FoodSPAN and General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and Mr. Nicholas Apokerah, Executive Director of the TradeAID Integrated.