Powered by IFAD

11 December 2006 – The heads of the three Rome-based food and agriculture agencies of the United Nations – the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP) – visited Ghana’s food insecure northern region last week to find better ways to work together to fight hunger and poverty in the country.

The visit to Ghana comes amid growing calls for reform and coherence among United Nations partners. Last month, the High Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence released its report to the Secretary General, making recommendations for change at the country level and at headquarters, as well as in the cross-cutting areas of gender, human rights and sustainable development.

“I believe the Panel’s recommendations will have a far-reaching impact on the way the UN system works,” IFAD President Lennart B?ge recently told the journal, Development Today. “In Rome, FAO, WFP and IFAD will work closely together to take our collaboration to a new level. We will respond fully to the Panel’s challenge of working together to help break the cycles of famines in Africa.”

The three agencies currently collaborate in Ghana on initiatives like school feeding programmes, farmers’ field schools and the Special Programme for Food Security – a programme designed to support nationally-owned solutions to end hunger, undernourishment and poverty.

Ghana has experienced one of the fastest declines in overall poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), income poverty in Ghana declined from 42 per cent in 1997 to 35 percent in 2005. Between 2003 and 2005, 500,000 Ghanaians were lifted out of poverty as a result of efforts by the Government of Ghana and donors under the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy.

Ghana is also one of the first African countries to meet the 1996 World Food Summit goal of reducing by half the number of undernourished people by 2015. Between 1992 and 2004, the number of undernourished people in Ghana fell from 5.8 million to 2.3 million.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said the international community will learn from the Ghana “success story” and replicate its lessons elsewhere. “With the right political will, there will be many success stories in Africa.”

Still, 70 per cent of the country’s poorest people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related activities for their survival. The incidence of poverty is particularly high in Ghana’s northern region, where access to basic social services, roads and clean drinking water is extremely limited.

According to the government’s poverty reduction strategy paper, low productivity and insufficient markets are two of the main causes of rural poverty in Ghana. Small-scale farmers rely on rudimentary methods and technology, and lack the inputs they need to increase yields, like fertilizer or better seeds.

“Investing in agriculture and rural development can not only boost the standard of living for poor rural women, children and men, but can spur economic growth for an entire region,” says B?ge. “Rural poverty programmes can also contribute to the effectiveness of other organizations that support education, health, governance and other services.”

Since 1980, IFAD has invested $US155.7 million in loans and grants in rural poverty programmes in Ghana – the largest user of IFAD resources in the region.

Source: IFAD