The Ghana Statistical Service and the World Food Programme have partnered to tackle food security and nutrition issues in Ghana.
They formalized their collaboration by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Wednesday, August 14, 2024, in Accra.
The MoU, which will remain in effect until December 2028, aims to establish a strategic partnership for generating collaborative evidence on food security and nutrition to guide national policies and programs.
Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, the Government Statistician, emphasized the need for efforts to align various statistical measures of food self-sufficiency, food security, food insecurity, and nutrition.
Ms. Barbara Clemens, the Country Director for the World Food Programme, stressed that ensuring food security and improving nutrition in Ghana is essential for sustainable development. She noted that robust evidence is crucial for guiding interventions and shaping policies to make a significant impact, especially as resources become more limited. The collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service is key to leveraging accurate data and insights to address food security and nutrition challenges effectively.
In the first year of the MoU, two major activities are planned: conducting the third national Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment (CFSVA) in 2025 and launching the mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (mVAM) in Ghana.
The CFSVA will provide updated information on food security at the household level, identify vulnerable areas and populations, assess trends, and support targeted interventions. The 2020 CFSVA report is available at https://statsghana.gov.gh.
The mVAM will use mobile technology to monitor household food security, nutrition, and market trends in real time, offering high-frequency, gender-disaggregated data to aid decision-making. Results from the mVAM can be found on the Hunger-Live-Monitoring platform at https://hungermap.wfp.org.
The Ghana Statistical Service is responsible for collecting, compiling, analyzing, publishing, and disseminating official statistics in Ghana, while the World Food Programme is the UN’s leading agency in the global fight against hunger.
