World Food Day in Accra, Ghana (Photo FAO: @Samuel Creppy)

16 October 2015, Accra – A flag-raising ceremony to celebrate the 35th World Food Day was held in Accra today, in the premises of the Parliament House.                                             

The event is observed every year around the world in member countries of the United Nations by people, institutions and civil society organizations committed to ending hunger. This year's celebration also marks the 70th Anniversary of the establishment of FAO in 1945. 

The theme for the World Food Day 2015, “Social Protection and Agriculture: Breaking the Cycle of Rural Poverty”, highlights the crucial role social protection plays in reducing chronic food insecurity and poverty by ensuring direct access to food and  providing a viable way to stimulate agricultural production and local economic activity.

Political commitment

Speaking at the ceremony, Ghana’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr Fiifi Kwettey, said the Government of Ghana had in the past few years launched a number of social protection programmes such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the School Feeding Programme, Capitation Grant, and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), all of which are part of a broader National Social Protection Strategy to tackle extreme poverty in Ghana.

“The Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme, administered by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, aims at providing a safety net for the most vulnerable and marginalized population in Ghana. Cash transfers are provided on a bi-monthly basis with the dual purpose of reducing poverty in the short term and focusing on long-term human development with a focus on health and education linking beneficiaries to complementary services in their communities”, the Minister explained.

He added that from its inception, the coverage of the programme had grown significantly from an initial pilot of 1,654 beneficiaries in 21 districts in 2008 to 74,000 household beneficiaries in December 2013, 70% of whom were female.

FAO indicated that despite much progress in the fight against hunger and malnutrition in Africa, many challenges still existed.

Deputy Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, John Alexander Ackon, said the Ministry has developed a social protection policy framework to facilitate a coordinated approach for the implementation of social protection and that a national validation exercise is currently underway.

He noted that the policy addresses the definition of social protection, the social protection law for Ghana, the basket of interventions, the governance and institutional framework for coordination, the targeting and establishment of a national household registry and sustainable financing policy implementation framework.

Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, on the other hand, said the fisheries sector in Ghana contributes to the attainment of national food security, income and poverty reduction goals of the government, providing livelihood support to over 2.7 million people.

She further noted that the Ministry in collaboration with other relevant stakeholders has undertaken several policy initiatives to confront the issues of hunger, national food security and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Social Protection is critical to attaining Food Security

Addressing the audience, Dr. Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Deputy Regional Representative for Africa and FAO Representative in Ghana, confirmed that countries in Africa were increasingly recognizing that social protection is acutely needed to relieve hunger and deprivation of people living in poverty and food insecurity.

“In Africa, almost 80% of the poor live in rural areas and rely mainly on agriculture related activities for their incomes and food security. Economic growth, especially in agriculture, has been essential to driving down rates of hunger and poverty”, he said.

Dr. Haile-Gabriel added that FAO considers social protection as a key element of its strategic framework, hence explicitly integrating it within its major areas of work and delivery mechanisms including the FAO Regional Initiatives and country programme frameworks. It is within the context of enhancing synergies between social protection and agriculture that FAO chose “Social Protection and Agriculture” as the theme for the World Food Day for this year.

Dr Christine Evans-Klock, the UN Resident Coordinator, noted that over 80 per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and rely mainly on agriculture for their income and food security.

The UN Resident Coordinator indicated that building a national social protection system is critical to addressing various dimensions of poverty and vulnerability among rural populations and said social protection is needed to help improve food security, access to better food and means of financing.

She strongly believes that social protection policy and programs must be well funded to ensure sustainability and also carefully integrated into the broader agriculture strategy to achieve food security.

FAO launched 2015 State of Food and Agriculture report in Accra

Earlier in the week, at a press conference, the FAO Regional Office for Africa launched the FAO’s State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA 2015) titled ‘Social protection and agriculture: breaking the cycle of rural poverty’.

Some of the major findings highlight that in poor countries, social protection schemes - such as cash transfers, school feeding programs and public works - offer an economical way to provide vulnerable people with opportunities to move out of extreme poverty and hunger and to improve their children's health, education and life chances. 

Launching the report, Mr. Bukar Tijani, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa, said only about a third of the world's poorest people are covered by any form of social protection and 1 out 5 persons in Africa is covered. “Expanding such programs in rural areas and linking them to inclusive agricultural growth policies would rapidly reduce the number of poor people”, he explained.

“Social protection programs allow households to access more food – often by increasing what they grow themselves – and also make their diets more diverse and healthier. These programs can have positive impacts on infant and maternal nutrition, reduce child labour and raise school attendance, all of which increase productivity”, he elaborated.

In Zambia for example, a pilot cash-grants program led recipient households to greatly increase livestock ownership as well as land under cultivation, input use and ownership of tools such as hoes, sickles and axes, leading to a 50 per cent jump in the overall value of locally produced agricultural commodities, he added. 

Dr. Alhassan Yakubu, Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, in charge of Crops said: “Agriculture constitutes an integral part of the general economy and challenges in the economy affect agricultural production”.

“There is the need to pay attention to farmers at the base as they have low purchasing power, especially schemes that supports farmers”, he emphasized.

The Representative of the IFAD Officer-in-Charge, Mr. Frank Luabeya Kapiamba, said IFAD enables rural folks to overcome poverty and recognizes agriculture as important to rural livelihood, and said any shock that affects agricultural production impacts heavily on the rural farmers; likewise, frequent changes in prices affect income of farmers as a well as the threat of climate change to building resilient agriculture. He emphasized that social protection is important for rural people who live in risks that may affect their livelihoods.

Useful links:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/faooftheun/22033687830/in/dateposted-public/

Global WFD 2015: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/338076/icode/; http://www.fao.org/webcast/home/en/item/3994/icode/

SOFA 2015 Launch: http://www.fao.org/africa/events/detail-events/en/c/337154/

Contacts:

[email protected], FAO-Ghana/Communication, Accra

[email protected], FAO-Africa/Communication, Accra