Madam Alimata Abu, the Governance Advisor and Coordinator from the Procurement Governance For Home Grown School Feeding (PGHGSF) project in the Upper West and Upper East regions, said 10,000 smallholder farmers in Ghana will benefit from the initiative.

He explained that the four-year PGHGSF project that seeks to improve the livelihoods of the farmers and to make the School Feeding Program (SFP) more effective in the localities of the beneficiaries is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is being implemented by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and would cover 20 districts in the country.

Madam Abu announced these in Wa at the weekend during a workshop to sensitise stakeholders of the SFP on the link between the SFP and the PGHGSF project.

She said about 30 per cent of the farmers would be women and the project would be implemented in four districts of the Upper West Region.

Madam Abu noted that the SFP was yet to meet its goal of boosting agricultural production through the use of locally grown foodstuffs, which the SFP had a ready market for.

She said that lack of accessibility to procurement procedures, adequate information, weak accountability and inefficient supply chain practices were some of the reasons SFP did not buy foodstuff from smallholder farmers.

Madam Abu said the PGHGSF would help improve SFP procurement process and strengthen the capacity of actors to ensure that smallholder farmers had access to GSFP structured market opportunities.

In a speech read on his behalf, Alhaji Duogu Yakubu, Wa Municipal Chief Executive, noted that there had been remarkable improvement in enrolment and retention of school children in schools that were benefiting from the SFP.

He said due to delay in payment s to caterers of the SFP; some farmers did not want to sell food stuff to the caterers.