Ghana
Something to Celebrate in Ghana
Jeffrey Rowland is the Director of Media and Communications at GAVI alliance. This piece originally appeared in the GAVI Alliance blog.
Under the sweltering sun in Accra’s immense Independence Square, hundreds of Ghanaian mothers and their newborn babies gathered this morning with the country’s First Lady, Ministry of Health officials, my boss GAVI Alliance CEO Seth Berkley and international partners and donors to celebrate the nationwide introduction of vaccines that protect against the biggest causes of pneumonia and severe diarrhoea.
A sea breeze from the Bay of Guinea and brightly festooned tents provided respite to the crowd, which included tribal chiefs and queens colourfully clad in traditional dress.
After the playing of the national anthem and a purposeful pause, a prayer served as a poignant moment of reflection for all those in attendance who have worked so hard to make today a reality.
Administrator Shah Meets with President of Ghana
USAID Administrator Raj Shah meets with President Mills of Ghana. Photo Credit: Pat Adams/USAID
Administrator Shah met with the President of Ghana, John Atta Mills to highlight USAID strong commitment to Ghana’s Partnership for Growth (PfG) and agricultural development through the Feed the Future (FtF) initiative. Feed the Future, is the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.
USAID and the Ghanaian government are working together to generate prosperity and security for both the Ghanaian and the American people by increasing agricultural production, employment opportunities, and income for the poor; improving the quality of health services and education; and strengthening local government institutions.
Partnering on the Ground: USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation
Julia Gitis is a Presidential Management Fellow in the Bureau of Economic Growth, Agriculture & Trade. She recently visited Senegal, Ghana, and Mozambique with a focus on donor coordination in the field.
MCC Resident Country Director Tanya Southerland meets with members of the World Food Programme and Government of Senegal at the site of future MCC irrigation projects in northern Senegal. Photo Credit: Julia Gitis/USAID
USAID celebrated its 50th birthday last week, thereby also celebrating half a century of successful partnerships in global development. One of the more recent and high-level partnerships in which USAID engages is with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government foreign aid agency started in 2004. USAID and MCC collaborate closely in Washington, DC, with the USAID Administrator serving as a permanent member of the MCC Board of Directors.
In the field, USAID and MCC look for concrete ways to partner more intently on the ground. Many of these opportunities currently revolve around Feed the Future, President Obama’s global hunger and food security initiative. I recently visited USAID and MCC counterparts in three Feed the Future focus countries—Senegal, Ghana, and Mozambique—to discuss how the two agencies can better leverage each other’s resources.
Interviewing a farmer who has benefited from both USAID and MCC programs in northern Ghana. Photo Credit: Elisa Walton/USAID
In Senegal, the relationship between MCC and USAID is positive. The 5-year, $540 million MCC compact in Senegal includes a focus on rice cultivation, with opportunities to leverage USAID’s value chain programs that include seeds, feeder roads, marketing to promote local programs, and access to credit. The Government of Senegal has assumed a proactive role in donor coordination, by including USAID representatives in discussions concerning collaboration around the MCC compact. Both agencies have a strong agriculture focus in Senegal, and MCC’s investments in roads, water resource management, and irrigation systems will tightly align with USAID’s implementation of Feed the Future priorities.
In Ghana, USAID and MCC have both worked extensively in the north, where the poverty rate is twice that of the rest of the country. In direct collaboration, USAID has helped place teachers in schools that were constructed by MCC. And the two agencies have focused on investments in agriculture; one farmer I spoke with has benefited from both USAID and MCC programs and saw his crop yield increase from 2 bags of corn to 10 bags of corn per acre—after which he was able to send his kids to school. Success stories like this one illustrate the importance of the work both agencies are doing. Under the Obama Administration’s Partnership for Growth effort, Ghana was selected as one of four countries to participate in an interagency process to improve development outcomes. USAID and MCC are working closely with the Government of Ghana to identify binding constraints to economic growth. Future work in the identified sectors will likely link with USAID’s implementation of Feed the Future programming. (more…)
A Partnership for Progress in Ghana
Note: USAID and Peace Corps are both celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year, as well as their ongoing collaboration. Both agencies have been active in Ghana since 1961. Currently, USAID is supporting volunteers’ innovative work in nutrition and food security as part of the Feed the Future Initiative.
Nakoja gained 7.6% of his body weight. Photo credit: Tricia Rasmussen
In the very north of the Volta region of Ghana, in the Nkwanta South District, you can find the village of Jumbo #1. Almost without exception, every person in Jumbo is a farmer. Along with rearing free-range animals, they farm cassava, maize, soya beans, tomatoes, okra, peanuts, and yams. Lots and lots of yams. As a Peace Corps Volunteer I arrived in Jumbo in August 2010. One of my first observations was that the children were very small. I recognized that they were stricken with varying degrees of malnutrition. Swollen bellies, thin limbs, 2-year-olds who “used to walk” and “can’t” anymore; this is what I saw as commonplace.
Tricia Rasmussen. Photo credit: Tricia Rasmussen
Using funds from USAID’s Small Project Assistance Grant, I was able to conduct a nutrition program using the “Positive Deviant” (PD) Hearth methodology, which focuses on finding basic nutrition in the locally available foods and using those foods to make children healthier. The program seeks out a mother whose child is above average weight (the ‘positive deviant’) to serve as an example of someone who is doing a good job of nourishing her child. The remaining women in the program are selected due to the malnourishment of their own children, as determined by a weighing of every child under five. For the 145 children weighed in Jumbo, the statistics were striking: only six percent of children were a healthy weight, and 67 qualified as being malnourished enough to participate in the program.
USAID and Rotary Bring Drinking Water to Ghana’s Volta Region
Laurel Fain is the Health Office Chief for the USAID Mission in Ghana.
USAID/Ghana Health Office Chief Laurel Fain (center right) joins GDA partners from Rotary International and Ghana Rotary Clubs at the hand-over of a potable drinking water system in Ghana’s Volta Region. Photo credit: USAID Ghana
On August 21 I joined Rotary International’s President Kaylan Banerjee as he led a delegation of American and Ghanaian Rotarians to meet Government of Ghana officials and local chiefs in a ceremony in Ghana’s Volta Region. The occasion was the handover of ownership and management of three mechanized water schemes to the Government of Ghana and the local communities of Abutia-Teti, Takla Gborgame and Nyive in Ho. The U.S. Government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Rotary Foundation each contributed $1 million to a Global Development Alliance (GDA) to provide safe drinking water and improved sanitation facilities in 114 communities in the Volta Region, Central Region and Greater Accra. According to Banerjee, this represents the largest investment the Rotary Foundation has made in any single project to date.
As the director of USAID/Ghana’s Health program I appreciate how participating in a GDA helps USAID leverage non-governmental funding to achieve US Government program objectives. Participating in the Abutia-Teti ceremony with the Rotarians gave me a new perspective on how GDAs enable non-governmental organizations like Rotary to leverage the experience and technical expertise of USAID.
Rotary Clubs are very popular in Ghana. Most of the Rotarians in the delegation to Ho were Ghanaian. The pride that they displayed in having helped bring safe drinking water to 10,000 of their countrymen was inspiring. It makes me proud to have been able to provide a cost-effective and efficient program through which their caring and their financial assistance could be channeled.
Be sure to check out Rotary’s blog and website, which are carrying the USAID story to an even wider international audience of Rotarians.
International Youth Day: Meeting the Reproductive Health Needs of Youth
I first came to D.C. in 1994, the year of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, which marked a milestone in the field of population and reproductive health. The conference set a turning point as the world agreed that population is not about numbers but about people and their rights. It also solidified my commitment to youth, health and development which began when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer working with youth in Ghana. Today I am the youth advisor for USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health.
Personal photo of Cate while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana circa 1994. Photo Credit: Cate Lane/USAID
More than half of the world’s population is under age 25. I believe meeting the reproductive health needs for today’s young people is vital in ensuring future generations are able to lead healthy and dignified lives. When girls are able to delay first pregnancy, they are more likely to obtain an education and end the cycle of poverty. The United Nations proclaimed the past year commencing on August 12, 2010 as the International Year of Youth. As the year comes to an end on International Youth Day, let us continue to stress the need for investment in programs that reach out to youth.
Listen to more of my thoughts on youth and development in this audio podcast by the Population Reference Bureau:
Involving Youth in Development Programming: Interview With Cate Lane, USAID by PopulationReferenceBureau
From the Field
In Benin, we will hold the closing ceremony of the first annual Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) campaign in northern Benin (Atacora) funded under President’s Malaria Initiative. IRS applies insecticide and protects against mosquitoes that transmit malaria in the houses of rural communities that are most exposed to the disease.
In Ghana, we will launch the Les Aspin Anti-corruption and Good Governance training program. Les Aspin’s Africa training program involves participants from Ghana (4 persons), Kenya (4 persons), Uganda (2 persons), Tanzania (2 persons), Mali (2 persons) and Nigeria (2 persons). Selected participants include junior to middle level personnel of government and civil society organizations working in the area of anti-corruption and the administration of justice. The Anti-Corruption and Good Governance program, which is an annual event, is a capacity building activity in anti-corruption and good governance for government and civil society leaders from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The six West and East African countries have been selected based on their political stability. The Les Aspin Center in Washington, D.C. conducts workshops in two phases: the orientation takes place in Ghana and the actual workshop takes place in the United States. For the current workshop, there are 16 participants representing civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, and government.
In Serbia, we will hold an event to mark our assistance to Serbian Berry Sector. This collaboration is significant to the progress and expansion of the berry sector in Serbia. Issues pertaining to export, coordination of assistance, new markets, policy issues and constraints will be addressed.
From the Field
In Lebanon, in honor of the World Earth Day, the U.S. Forest Service and local NGO Association for Forest Development and Conservation (AFDC) organized a short play at Aley Cultural Secondary School to raise awareness on forest fire prevention and fire fighting techniques. This event included a short play on fire safety and demonstrations on fire fighting using a fire engine. Over 280 students and faculty members participated in the event.
In Ghana, to commemorate World Malaria Day, a Presidential Malaria Initiative (PMI) resident advisor held a radio interview on USAID PMI efforts to end malaria in Ghana. The USG through USAID and CDC is supporting Ghana’s goal to reduce the malaria disease burden by 75% by the year 2015. In 2010, PMI donated over 2.3 million bed nets to Ghana, and also supported indoor residual spraying in 8 districts in Northern Region, which protected 850,000 people.
In Mozambique, we held a soccer tournament with school children from local communities to disseminate the malaria message. We continue to seek new and innovative ways to combat malaria at the local level.
Extending Quality Health Services to Underserved Groups through Faith Networks
By Susan K. Brems, Ph.D., Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Global Health
In Ghana last week, I had the privilege to participate in the Africa Christian Health Associations’ 5th Biennial Conference, “Improving Women’s and Children’s Health in Africa.”
Christian Health Associations and networks from Africa and partner organizations met to take stock of their efforts in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and discuss opportunities to strengthen local capacity to deliver services for women and children.
USAID’s Bureau for Global Health has worked with numerous organizations to support the critical roles played by churches, mosques, synagogues and other faith networks in their broader communities. We have successfully empowered various faith-based leaders to speak openly in their respective communities about the crippling effects of HIV and AIDS and about the importance of planning one’s family and preventing children and families from falling ill and dying from malaria.
Last week, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah delivered the David E. Barmes Global Health Lecture at the National Institutes of Health. Recounting the successes that have been achieved in recent decades in global health, Dr. Shah outlined the challenges that currently exist and set out a roadmap for USAID and the wider health community to take advantage of the window of opportunity in front of us to accomplish a new wave of successes that can dramatically improve health around the world, particularly for children under age five and women. (more…)
Fruit and Faith
Senior Advisor Ari Alexander is in Ghana and highlights one of his field visits to a farm program.
Hello from Ghana where I had the privilege yesterday to observe the fruits of a great development success story in the Eastern Region of Ghana. A faith-based organization conceived, proposed, designed, and implemented a project to introduce fruit trees to smallholder farmers as a path to economic growth and sustainability. USAID through the use of PL480 Title II Food Aid resources supported this concept from 1997 until 2006. Visiting with these orange and mango farmers five years after USAID’s support ended, the success of our cooperative investment is self-evident. The farmers now sustain themselves and contribute largely to Ghana’s economy.
The Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) brought me to the farms in Somanya, Sikaben, and Akyem Sekyere where, originally, 1-3 acre plots were allotted to 5,424 different farmers in the region. Fourteen years after this program started, these farmers have organized into associations and are selling their fruit to local processing plants. Many of the farmers have expanded to dozens of acres.
Senior Advisor for NGO Partnerships and Global Engagement Ari Alexander meets with Mrs. Grace Mensah, a mango farmer on the ADRA site visit. Photo Credit: Joshua Umahi
The families have become frontline actors in a story of economic growth. More young people are finding farming an attractive possibility for a financially secure future.
I had the opportunity to hear testimonies of a village chief, a member of parliament who accompanied me, and ordinary farmers – men and women- about the transformative work led by ADRA with USAID’s support. The relationships developed and the trust built over many years enabled us to effectively connect smallholder farmers with local small businesses to complete the value chain.
Too often these stories are hidden under the fruit trees. The next time you’re in France, the UK, the Netherlands or Italy (or Ghana!) I urge you to try the fresh pineapple ginger juice from the farmers and factories of Ghana.
If you have found similar success stories, please share them with us at fbci(at)usaid.gov
Ari Alexander is Director for the Center for Faith-based & Community Initiatives and the Senior Advisor of NGO Partnerships and Global Engagement at USAID
