sector and (Ghanaian and Dutch) government came together to celebrate the official end of the Dutch involvement in the GSFP.
Read a short report of the conference. It sums up the accomplishments and several lessons learnt that were discussed at the conference.
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| Photo: Ato Bob Hensen |
The main message of the afternoon was that the end of SIGN does not mean the end of the GSFP. On the contrary, this Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme will continue under the leadership of the Ghanaian government, with assistance of some of SIGNs partners like the Partnership for Child Development (PCD). As Ghana’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Mrs. Aanaa Enin, stated, “This is the time to show the programme’s maturity and ownership.” The Ghanaian government claims to remain committed to strengthen and improve the programme. “It is a bold step for the government to take over all funding responsibilities,” the ambassador said. However, she believes that the HGSF programme is important for the sake of the children, “who are the future of Ghana”, and for the farmers, “who are the bedrock of our society”.
Hans Eenhoorn, initiator of SIGN, took participants back to the beginning. SIGN became a platform for public-private partnerships aimed at making Home Grown School Feeding a success in Ghana. And despite some problems, “unstoppable progress was confirmed”. Currently, the GSFP reaches 1,070,000 children. This is about a third of all school going children in Ghana, and the most undernourished children of the country. Hans Eenhoorn was pleased with where the GSFP stands at the end of the SIGN trajectory: “It can be confirmed that Home Grown School Feeding is an African solution for an African problem.”
Participants of the conference expressed much admiration and appreciation for the accomplishments of SIGN. SIGN was quoted as a model for best practice by PCD director Lesley Drake; Her Excellency Enin referred to SIGNs valuable support for the Ghanaian government which led to successes in terms of declined absenteeism, improved retention and enrolment; and local entrepreneur Raja Najjar expressed gratitude on behalf of the schoolchildren: “I’ve brought with me 1,070,000 ‘thank you’s from Ghana,” he said.
Dutch minister for European Affairs and International Cooperation Ben Knapen also spoke about the impact of SIGN. In his closing address, he highlighted the importance of the access to healthy food. He said that despite many positive developments, much work still needs to be done. “Progress should vitalise us, but should not make us think that things go without effort,” he emphasised. Companies, research institutes and NGOs need to work together for innovative developments. In the minister’s view, pilot projects like SIGN show some prospects of what lies ahead, and that development does not go in a straight line. Ultimately, Mr. Knapen was convinced that SIGN has had significant impact and that the GSFP has come a long way from a good idea to a properly implemented programme. “Your pioneering work sets a shining example, not only to us and the people of Ghana, but also to other countries where your lessons learned are taken to heart.”
As Mr. Knapen and H.E. Enin both pointed out, “there is still a long road to travel”. The conference was a useful platform to exchange lessons learnt and barriers that still lie ahead for the GSFP. Daniel Mumuni, Regional Director for PCD rightly noted that despite the positive results so far, we should not skip the steps of evaluation and careful consideration only because we want to showcase quick results: “GSFP does not end today, so it’s only right to pause and identify where we can improve.”
Involving farmers
The involvement of farmers in the programme arises as one of the major problems the programme still faces. It took SIGN a while to realise that the GSFP actually consists of two programmes: one aimed at feeding children and the other aimed at developing the livelihoods of local farmers. The initial focus of the national secretariat on increasing enrolment and attendance resulted in neglecting essential aspects like training farmers and organising them so that they can become worthy partners of the GSFP. Unfortunately, the Ghanaian government did not pay special attention to linking farmers to the programme. Hans Eenhoorn said: “We thought that a new market would automatically lead to farmer involvement and organisation. Now we understand that this programme consists of two pillars.” The GSFP’s core focus on increasing enrolment and retention was one of the reasons why research institute TNO pulled out of the SIGN membership. As Mathilde Miedema from TNO explained, their projects in Ghana, developing smart farming tools and food processing methods, were intended to complement the GSFPs objective of increasing farmers’ productivity. However, it proved difficult to link farmers to the schools and therefore the necessity for collaboration diminished.Some of the audience members noted that many farmers still struggle to form cooperatives and have little or no access to vocational training, which leads to an exodus from the rural areas. Lesley Drake, director of PCD, spoke about similar issues: “From our perspective, the agricultural link is crucial,” she said. King David Amoah (ECASARD), who has extensive experience in working with farmers and farmers’ organisations, acknowledged there are challenges for farmers to participate in the GSFP. A pilot study conducted by ECASARD and SNV revealed that a mere 21% of farmers that took part in the pilot were aware of the programme, and mostly only in relation to their children receiving food. Since individual farmers have difficulty accessing the programme, the pilot was aimed at forming farmer-clusters. In these clusters, farmers can collectively offer more products and each cluster can focus on a different product, which makes it easier for caterers to identify farmers and procure from them. In addition, this pilot brought the farmers, caterers and community together to discuss what they needed from each other. “As a cluster, it definitely works!” according to King David Amoah.
Hans Eenhoorn believes that civil society should take a leading role in improving farmer involvement. Yet, an important job remains for the Ghanaian government to strengthen extension services for farmers – a job to which the government claims to be committed, according to the Ghanaian ambassador. However, there is more to farmer involvement than access to information and education. “It seems as if the current model offers access rather than opportunities for participation”, Hedwig Brugman (AgriProFocus) pointed out. She suggested that Ghana can learn from the successful participation of farmers in school feeding programs in other countries like Brazil for example, where farmer participation in school feeding programmes is taken into account by formulating policies that create an enabling environment for farmers to be active participants in the programme. “Policies will immortalise school feeding programmes,” according to Lesley Drake. We must look at food production in the formulation of policies, she believes, and raised some questions to pay attention to in this regard: “how do we support farmers in improving the quality of their crop? What procurement models work in different areas? How can we help them understand the availability of other markets and storage options?” PCD’s Regional Director Daniel Mumuni adds that there is no one-size-fits-all programme, for one because different ministries are in charge of the programme in different countries. However the supply chain is the same in all contexts, and it is very important to monitor the effectiveness of supply chains as this is key for the involvement of local farmers and therefore the sustainability of the program.
Community participation in a transparent programme
Stineke Oenema (ICCO) explained a difference in ICCO’s approach and that of the GSFP, which complicated partnership and collaboration between both parties on the design and implementation: “The GSFP is government-owned, top-down and inflexible,” she said, “while ICCO’s local partners are more used to bottom-up, community based programmes.” The anticipated numbers of schoolchildren benefitting from the program were reached, but involving the community and therefore ensuring community ownership has not been achieved yet. This was confirmed by some members of the audience. Stakeholders at the community level need to be included in this multi-stakeholder partnership as well. The GSFP seems to have increased opportunities for community involvement now.Irene Messiba, GSFP focal person within the Ghanaian Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, believes the solution is to intensify sensitisation and awareness among farmers and communities on the programme, towards which the government has already taken steps. For example, a local level forum has been established, offering a space for civil society organisations, farmers’ organisations and others to gather and collaborate.
But community involvement goes beyond the availability of information. Zan Akologo, working for the National Catholic Secretariat and an accomplished human rights activist, said that the government now provides more space for civil society to engage in policy issues for example. Also for governments, viable links with civil society are important to bridge the gap that might occur when policies cannot be translated to the realities on the ground. According to Zan Akologo, partnerships with civil society can enhance policy debate by showing policymakers alternative ways of working. Sometimes civil society organisations are more successful in identifying challenges at the grass root level. “Civil society in Ghana has good stories to tell about what works and does not work,” he says.
Even though accurate and continuous information provision from the government was lacking in the past, this has improved with the implementation of the Social Accountability Project (SAP), according to Zan Akologo. Also the Dutch Ambassador to Ghana, Gerard Duifjes, stated: “The social accountability project has proven successful in giving ground-level actors the opportunity to challenge what is happening.” Sarah Agbey (SNV) is involved with the implementation of the Social Accountability Project. She mentioned that initially, there was only funding available for school feeding, and not for the processes surrounding the intervention. The SAP has helped to improve the communication between the government and civil society. However, Sarah Agbey believed, “social accountability should be mainstreamed from the beginning” – unlike what happened with the GSFP.
Effective partnerships
Important lessons can be learned from the actual setup of SIGN, said SIGN Director Sabine Lucassen: “As a platform we were very successful,” Sabine said: the platform consisted of sixteen members from all four pillars of society, which created an independent, innovative and influential basis in support of the HGSF programme in Ghana. Through the platform SIGN was able to exercise soft power and influence both governments on several occasions. But SIGN was less successful in creating effective partnerships – it was difficult to transform commitment into action. According to Sabine, “for effective partnerships you need more than a platform: you need real working relationships and mutual trust and engagement.”Bruno Kistner of DSM explained why DSM never got to form a partnership with the GSFP (but stayed committed however to SIGN). “Nothing really went wrong,” he says, “but the relationship between the development and private sector has always been a bit tense.” Bruno Kistner stressed the importance of being clear about underlying motivations, agendas and sensitivities in partnerships like these. For companies like DSM, partnerships with the development sector are not initially about sales, but about creating markets and boosting their image.
Sabine Lucassen mentions transparency as one of the most important successes of SIGN. “We really took it as a core value to be as open and transparent as possible.” SIGN has been instrumental in information sharing. Moreover, SIGN stayed neutral among all different players supporting the GSFP and continued to share all information, both positive and negative. “Bad news needs to be shared as well, to make people understand the complexity of development programmes – something that other organisations should take into account as well,” Sabine believes.
The programme’s politics
The Dutch ambassador to Ghana, Gerard Duifjes, spoke about several problems of the GSFP. One was the politicisation of the GSFP. “Hardly a day goes by when the GSFP is not in the press,” he said. “The political nature of the programme is a challenge,” according to the Dutch ambassador. In the past, the programme was used by politicians to get votes, which led to a change in the GSFP’s targets to fit into the political programme. Mr. Adamu, (the fourth coordinator of the GSFP in a period of six years), ensured all present all political parties currently support the programme, and that newly formulated policies will be backed up by law, thus making the GSFP independent of the ruling party.Mr. Duifjes also touched on the limited involvement of the different ministries responsible for programme design and implementation. For example, school feeding programmes attract students to the school without this increase in enrolment being backed up with an increase in teachers and school infrastructure. In addition, the cooperation between different ministries could enhance opportunities to integrate school feeding with nutritional education, for instance. The challenge for the Ghanaian government is to get ministries to collaborate and become more involved to solve these kinds of problems together. Irene Messiba of the Ghanaian Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development touched on possible solutions for improved inter-ministerial collaboration: a programme steering committee has been set up consisting of all ministries involved, and a technical committee is available to them for technical consultations. In addition, decentralized implementation committees have been established at district level. “Collaboration remains difficult, especially when roles and responsibilities are not properly defined. But in this pilot project in sub-Saharan African, Ghana is learning by doing,” Irene emphasised. The government started up the initiation of a national policy, “a legal frame to ensure stronger commitment, which provides guidelines for collaboration and accountability.” Many actors were consulted to ensure wide ownership of the policy.
The end of SIGN
Hans Eenhoorn said that he learnt that development programmes are much more complex than the procedures in a company like Unilever. But despite the challenges, the GSFP will continue under the supervision of the Ghanaian government. Daniel Mumuni added that the governments commitment is very laudable, however the programme design still needs to be improved. Since home grown school feeding is new for the government, all the partners need to help the government to plan intervention activities, build synergies, and enhance for example programme communication. At the same time, PCD will start to roll out support to similar programmes in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. “With the experience Ghana built,” H.E. Enin declared, “Ghana has the opportunity to become the model of best practices in Africa.”Read also:
- Opening Address by H.E Ambassador Aana Anin
- Speech by the Minister for European Affairs and International Cooperation, Ben Knapen, at the final SIGN conference, 27 October 2011, The Hague
- Powerpoint presentation of SIGN initiator Hans Eenhoorn on the history of SIGN
- Powerpoint presentation of SIGN director Sabine Lucassen on multi-stakeholder collaboration
- Powerpoint presentation of PCD Regional director Daniel Mumuni on lessons learnt of the GSFP
- Final publication ‘ SIGN experiences: a struggle in trust and partnership’, shared with all conference participants
