Ghana’s performance in eradicating poverty has been quite remarkable at the national level and in urban areas.
According to the Minister of Food and Agriculture Mr Fifi Kwetey, there are small differences across the 10 regions and socio-economic groups in terms of the depth and incidence of poverty, with the three northern regions, some districts in the south and some food crop farmers not benefiting from the remarkable decline in poverty incidence.
He noted that available figures showed that Ghana has managed to reduce extreme poverty from 36.5 per cent to 18.2 per cent from 1991 and 2006 and almost devided the proposition of the people living below the upper poverty line from 51.7 per cent to 28.4 per cent over the same period.
Speaking at a ceremony to mark this year’s World Food Programme day in Accra Hon. Fifi Kwetey, stated that this was far ahead of the millennium development goal target year of 2015 but this decline is not reflected everywhere.
He added that government has therefore resolved to fight food insecurity, reduce poverty and enhance household incomes of the rural poor.
The Minister disclosed that in achieving this, a number of social protection programmes including the Resilient and Sustainable livelihoods Transformation (RESULT) have been put in place to mitigate the effects of poverty on poor rural farmers, he said.
The RESULTS project has a budgetary support of 19 million Canadian dollars to help government comprehensively tackle the issue of food insecurity and poverty reduction in northern Ghana over a six year period spanning 2012 to 2018.
This seeks to enhance food security and resilience for about 21,000 poor male and female small holder farmers and their households in the northern Ghana.
The aim of the project is to help poor farmers produce more food for their families, generate higher and more stable incomes from diversified sources and establish a threshold of resilience from which they could resist shocks and pursue more market-oriented growth opportunities.
By: Kasapafmonline.com/Ghana
