Report on the sensitization and training workshop on institutional capacity enhancement for surveillance on food systems in Ghana.
Covid-19 is a treat to food security in terms of its availability, accessibility, stability and utilization. It is estimated that the number of unsecured people in the Sahel and West Africa region in April 2020 was 11.4 million according to evidence from the review of National Food and Nutrition Crisis response plans. In Ghana, about 1.9 million of the population are food insecure out of which 21,712 representing 1.2 percent are in crisis. In order to introduce interventions that will support increase in crop production in food insecure regions, AGRA conducted a training workshop on Institutional capacity enhancement for surveillance on food systems for key stakeholders at the Conference hall of the Department of Agriculture on the 20th of August 2021.
Key stakeholders that attended included staff of the Central Administration and Agric Departments of the Office of the Bawku Municipal Assembly, the Regional office of Agriculture Department and the Ministry of food and Agric. The objective of the workshop was to strengthen the capacity of staff of the Department of Agriculture to provide reliable data that will support Government in decision making process and service delivery to Agricultural value chain actors. It was also to build the capacity of staff of the Department of Agriculture to improve the quality of data generated on strategic stocks to feed into national and international database systems.
Godsway Banini, the lead facilitator took participants through the scope of study stating that data would be collected from 1,700 respondents ( i.e. 10 respondents will be selected from 10 communities from 17 Municipal/ District Assemblies). He added that trade along the key boarder areas of the country would be monitored in terms of inflows and outflows of food commodities. He also stated that the market price data will be collected from at least three traders for different food commodities. The food commodities include cereals, roots and tubes, legumes, fruits, vegetables, livestock and fish. He expected that the study would improve planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Agricultural programs as well as enhance the food security situations in Ghana.
Godsway Banini also informed participants that data on commodity prices, crop and livestock production will be analyzed using statistical packages such SPSS and stata on weekly and monthly basis. He added that bulletins, reports, emails etc will be shared periodically with Regional and District Departments of Agriculture and other key stakeholders in the Agricultural sector. An end of project workshop to disseminate results of the study would be carried out.