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afrol News, 14 November - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced it had approved a US$1 5.3 million Ghana Country Programme to provide 482,000 Ghanaians with food aid through 2005. - The WFP Country Programme will supply 35,000 tonnes of food over the next four years, and was designed in close collaboration with the Government of Ghana to support its poverty reduction activities in the country, WFP today stated in a press release. The programme, which is linked to other UN agency and non-governmental organisation (NGOs) projects includes three basic activities; community health and nutrition education, girls education, and savannah resource management. In addition to the overall country programme, US$ 4.7million will be requested for HIV/AIDs programmes. - The people of Ghana have inadequate access to basic education and health nor do all have the opportunity to make a living, said Eva Hodell, Country Director, WFP Ghana. "This has not only arrested the individual’s ability to make ends meet at the most basic level, but it has also hampered the country’s development." The most recent WFP study shows that in the three of Ghana’s northern savannah regions, 45 per cent of all children are underweight and malnutrition among women is a major health problem, particularly during pregnancy. - Our aim is to help poor and hungry families to take charge of their lives enabling them to stand on their own two feet against poverty, Hodell said. In the first of the three projects, WFP food will serve as a nutritional supplement to malnourished pre-school children attending community health and nutrition centres. The agency will also use food as an incentive to expectant and nursing mothers to attend health and nutrition education classes. - In the northern savannah rural areas only 67 per cent of boys and 62 per cent of girls are enrolled in primary school, rates which are substantially below the national average, WFP stresses. Through the WFP girls’ education project, some 29,600 female pupils will be offered a monthly take-home ration of cereals and oil in return for attending school. - This food will act as an incentive for families to enrol their girls in primary school and to maintain regular attendance, said Hodell. "Take-home rations have proved an extremely effective way of ensuring attendance, and therefore improving performance." Recent studies indicate that about 58 per cent of farmers do not have enough food to feed their families, because of recurrent drought, reduced soil fertility and high population growth. Concentrated mainly in the northern regions, these families endure the worst food shortages between March and August each year. To address this, WFP says it is to provide food "as an incentive for rural families to invest their time and resources in adopting new forestry management practices such as; building tree and plant nurseries, agro-forestry plantation and soil and water
structures." Sources: Based on WFP
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