By Jeremiah Nutsugah
The second phase of the West Africa Food System Resilience Program has been inaugurated today, December 7th, 2023, at the Prempeh Assembly Hall in Kumasi.
This initiative, led by the government and executed by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, aims to address the region’s concerning food security challenges.
West Africa, alongside its international partners, is intensifying efforts to counteract the worrisome food security trends prevalent in the region. The project’s primary goal is to enhance preparedness against food system challenges in participating countries, which currently include Mali, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sierra Leone, and Senegal.
The distinguished panel at the launch included Mr. Philip Daniel Lartey, Operations Manager of the FSRP, Ashwini Rekha Sebastian, World Bank representative and task team leader for the FSRP, and Mr. Paul, Acting Director and Director of Agricultural Extension at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Mr. Philip Daniel Lartey, the Operations Manager of FSRP, outlined the project’s scope, emphasizing collaboration with stakeholders. Out of an anticipated 300,000 beneficiaries, the project aims to reach approximately 250,000 farmers, focusing on smallholder and medium-scale farmers involved in valued food chains such as rice, maize, soya beans and poultry, with a special emphasis on youth and vulnerable women.
He emphasized that the project is not confined to national boundaries but extends regionally, leveraging the collective and comparative advantages of participating countries.
Miss Ashwini Rekha Sebastian who is the rep of the World Bank highlighted some of the challenges contributing to food insecurity. Since 2019, food security has been a recurring issue due to the impacts of COVID-19, the Russian-Ukraine War, and the imminent effects of climate change, with agriculture identified as a major contributor.
The Government of Ghana (GoG) through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in collaboration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intended to participate in the second phase of the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP2) under the World Bank Multi-Phase Programmatic Approach (MPA) to strengthen regional food system risk management, improve the sustainability of the productive base in targeted areas and to develop regional agricultural markets.
