ACCRA – The Ghana School Feeding Programme and its partners marked the 5th edition of the Africa Day for School Feeding Tuesday, 03 March 2020 under the theme “ONE MEAL, MANY BENEFIT” at Nkonsia Presby A&B Primary School, Wenchi – Bono Region
The Day was instituted by African Heads of State during the AU Summit held in January 2016, in recognition of the tremendous impact of home-grown school feeding on improving enrolment, retention and performance of children in school, as well as in boosting incomes and livelihoods of local communities.
School feeding is the world’s most widespread safety-net programme with more than 370 million children assisted through interventions in 131 countries.
Since the pilot of the Ghana School Feeding Programme in 2005, the number of children being fed daily has increased from 1, 671, 777 in 2016/2017 to 2,935,555 pupils in 2018/2019 spread across the 260 districts of Ghana and the number of schools is 9, 162 currently
Government of Ghana plans to expand the programme to cover many more schools in the coming years. It is envisaged that in the near future all children in school in deprived communities would be covered under the programme.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme since its inception has contributed to increased school enrolment, attendance and retention in beneficiary schools. Another key focus of the Ghana School Feeding Programme is to boost domestic food production. Government is therefore committed to stimulating local agricultural growth, by requesting caterers to buy and use foodstuff grown locally from local farmers.
We wish to acknowledge the immense contribution of the Ministries of Education, Health, Food and Agriculture, Local Government and Rural Development, the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, Ghana Education Service, Ghana Health Service, and Development Partners such as such as World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF, Partnership For Child’s Development (PCD) and YEDENT Ghana to the success of the GSFP since its inception.
We acknowledge challenges particularly on the disbursement of feeding grants to caterers; we are committed to resolving it. Our focus this year will among other things be to improve overall monitoring, food quality and feeding days in real time.
Signed:
Siiba Alfa
Public Relations Officer
