By Nicholas Osei Wusu
The World Food Programme, WFP, has begun taking an order of 10 thousand metric tons of food from Ghana for 2022 to feed the vulnerable in neighbouring Burkina Faso.
The WFP has explained that the decision to take its food supply order from Ghana is a deliberate measure not only to invest in the local economy, but, also to help the country to cut down down its reliance on food importation from outside of West Africa especially in such challenging times as posed by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The WFP has taken delivery of its second order of food at Kwaso in the Ashanti region and dispatched the consignment to Burkina Faso.
The World Food Programme or WFP is an agency of the United Nations concerned with the promotion of the agricultural value chain and fighting against hunger anywhere in the world with particular emphasis on famine areas.
In 2021 the WFP, through the assistance of Canada, provided a repayable grant of two point-five million Dollars to Premium Foods, an indigenous food processing company in the Ashanti region with the ultimate aim of empowering the Ghanaian company to supply the UN agency with SuperCereal meals to feed vulnerable people in Burkina Faso.
The intervention is in line with the WFP’s integrated nutrition-food security initiative called *Enhanced Nutrition and Value Chains* in Ghana.
The support was part of the Programme’s contribution to Ghana’s economy through agro processing and support for players in the agric value chain starting from small holder farmers to transporters of its supply order consignment to beneficiary countries in West Africa.
The WFP last year received a pilot order of 600 metric tons of SuperCereal from the Ghanaian food processor and sent it to Burkina Faso.
The latest order of one thousand 800 metric tons of SuperCereal meal has also been delivered according to specification by the Ghanaian enterprise and spontaneously dispatched by Ghanaian transporters to Burkina Faso where there is an appreciable level of hunger and food insecurity.
SuperCereal is a blend of maize and soya beans fortified with many nutrients to spur proper development in pregnant and lactating women, children and adolescents.
The Managing Director of Premium Foods, Mr. Tom Gambrah, thanked the Canadian Government and the WFP for their support.
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He noted that it was the WFP that wrote a proposal to seek financial support from the Canadian government at a time Ghanaian banks were reluctant in helping him.
According to him, it was after disbursement of the Canadian money that the local banks saw his company as credit-worthy and therefore offered support.
The Minister-Counsellor and Senior Director of Development Programmes at the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, Madam Sara Nicolls, expressed satisfaction that her country’s intervention in Ghana has been worthwhile.
The Country Representative of the WFP, Madam Barbara Clemens, her agency’s food order is directly injecting more than $2.3 million into the Ghanaian economy with the intention of helping the country to reduce its over reliance on food importation from the outside world, especially in times of crisis as being witnessed in the Russia-Ukraine war.
In all, the WFP is to take delivery of about 10 thousand metric tons of food consignment order from the Ghanaian agro processor by the end of this year.
