GHANA: Food Security

Houses in Tolon, Ghana.

Northern Region of Ghana.

Team Connection

Three members of our team, Kwaku, Cole, and Nick, Skyped with geography students from the University of Cape Coast on Friday, October 21st. We discussed our plans for the project and what we had accomplished thus far. We asked the students about their current work on OpenStreetMap. They are working on other projects like Hurricane Matthew aid in Haiti and also mapping major landmarks in Ghana. We shared with them our task areas and asked if they would consider helping us map our area in the Northern Region. Later on in the discussion, students asked us about our techniques and why we are mapping the areas in the Northern Region of Ghana. It was an awesome experience to meet with the class face-to-face and we will continue to be in contact with them to strengthen our relationship and better understand the area.

Cole Edwards

Country Information

Ghana Background

Ghana is one of the most thriving democracies on the African continent. Ghana is located in Western Africa with Togo to the east, and Cote d'Ivoire to the west. There are currently ten regions, further divided into 216 local districts with the capital and largest city of Ghana being Accra. A country covering an area of 238,500 square kilometers, Ghana has an estimated population of 25,199,609 (2013), drawn from more than one hundred ethnic groups with the primary language being English. Ghana’s main source of economy is agriculture, which employs about 40 percent of the working population, Ghana is also one of the leading exporters in cocoa. In 1957, Ghana became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence after being under British colonial rule. Ghana was ruled by a series of military leaders until the latest democratic experiment started in 1992 and it is what has gained recognition for Ghana as a leading democracy in Africa.

http://www.bradtguides.com/destinations/africa/ghana/background-information.html

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/country_information/

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2860.htm

USAID and Programs

Ghana is facing a food crisis throughout the country but especially bad in the remote northern areas. It is an area deprived of most of the growth and developmental plans in Ghana. With agriculture being these peoples most important source of income and poor soils to deal with, the people are living in poverty and malnutrition. USAID is combating that with the Feed The Future program which is helping 5.2 million people in northern Ghana. It focuses on producing rice, maize, and soybeans in the northern area to help fight poverty and hunger. It also improves on the management of marine fisheries which is an important source of protein for the poor. In 2014 USAID helped 23,590 farmers produce more than 93,800 tons of rice, maize and soybean and sell them for $27.7 million in total sales, a $12.8 million increase from a 2012 baseline. Through the use of new technologies, farmers can continue to improve and produce crops needed to survive.

https://www.usaid.gov/ghana/agriculture-and-food-security

https://www.feedthefuture.gov/country/ghana

http://www.youthmappers.org/projects-1

Nick Wisniewski

State of OpenStreetMap in Ghana

For some of the areas that we have begun mapping, the images appear to be very clear and crisp. Certain areas have little to no buildings, but villages or towns such as Zabzugu, Tatale, Sang, Tolon, and so on, are particularly heavy with buildings and roads. Thankfully there does not appear to be much cloud coverage in these areas which is very good since many areas in Ghana are yet to be mapped. Thanks to OSM, the heavy and high priority areas are highlighted in orange in order to show just how populated or importance these areas have. There are several UN agencies that are able to provide GIS data for areas throughout Africa. With the help of Google maps, it is easier to help see how the villages are set up and just which areas are actually buildings. There are major roads that run through these villages, and Google Maps provides insurance that these are in fact a major part of these areas. On a given occasion the group was also able to get into contact with the YouthMappers from The University of Cape Coast in Ghana, which is a rather large group of up to 180, and have a one on one skype session with one another to discuss techniques and coordinate with the mapping of this awesome country.

Cheyenne Betancourt

We are mapping villages and towns in the central and northeastern region of Ghana. These towns include Zabzugu, Tatale, Sang, Gushiago, Nalerigu, and Tolon. The map above generally outlines the region. The orange squares symbolize mapped building density. From the map, the town that shows the highest density of buildings that we are mapping is Tatale. Nalerigu shows the least amount of buildings mapped on OSM.

The above timeline shows the recency of edits in our region. There will definitely be another spike of edits in 2016 from our group.

http://osm-analytics.org/#/show/polygon:d%7CkA%7Dgd_AefCgCytAzOm%60Amn%40%60OkrA%60NifBbwB%7BOv_Cr%5E%7CgAjsA/buildings/recency

Cole Edwards

Food Security

The General Problem

The general problem being addressed in Ghana is food insecurity. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), food insecurity is defined as a state of limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (USDA, 2015). With regards to worldwide perspective of the problem of food insecurity, the 2015 edition of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report on The State of Food Insecurity in the World-Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress, indicates that 795 million people in the world are chronically undernourished due to food insecurity, and food insecurity remains high and widespread globally (FAO, 2015). In Sub-Saharan Africa, which is described as the host of many of the world’s food insecure and undernourished, the number of food insecure individuals has been increasing from 176 million in 1992 to 214 million people in 2015 and makes up 23.8% of the world food insecure population.

In Ghana, it has been shown that more than 7% of the population is food insecure and undernourished (FAO, 2015). The causes of food insecurity in Ghana are complex and inter-related, ranging from overdependence on unreliable rainfall pattern, the practice of outmoded traditional and cultural norms, high illiteracy, poor access to production resources, and lack of improved agricultural technologies. Food insecurity and undernourishment in Ghana is more prevalent in the rural areas which are characterized by higher levels of poverty, higher incidence of under-five and maternal mortality and a higher level of underdevelopment. In particular, food insecurity and undernourishment are more prevalent in the rural areas of the Northern Region particularly among female-headed households (Antwi and Lyford, 2016).

Possible Solutions

The problem of food insecurity has been identified by the government of Ghana and its development partners and efforts are being made to address the problem. These efforts include the implementation of food insecurity intervention programs in most of the food insecure areas in Ghana. For example, the Government is collaborating with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement the Feed The Future Program. This program is expected to build and strengthen the resilience capacities of the food insecure in the country to help them recover from shocks and risks to their food security. Direct distribution of food through food aid is also being undertaken by organizations such as the World Food Program (WFP). These efforts need to be complemented by proper identification of the food insecure in term of their geographical location, and this is where OpenStreetMap could be useful. Creating the open data for Ghana to help locate people, places, and resources will help to better properly identify and come up with policies to solve the problem. In the future, the data being developed could be developed and used to assist in efforts to reduce food insecurity in Ghana.

Kwaku Antwi

References:

1. Food and Agricultural Organization. 2015. The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress, Rome: FAO.

2. United States Agricultural Development Agency (2015). 2015 Economic Research Services Report. Food Insecurity in the United States.

3. Antwi KD, L. Conrad. 2016. Socioeconomic Determinants of Rural Households Food Access in the Northern Region of Ghana. Journal of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development. Vol. 4 (2): pp356-367.

Mapping Status and Goals

In order to ensure complete resilience of the scarcity of food in Northern Ghana our team has made it a priority to map buildings and roads. 1.2 million people, representing 5 percent of Ghana’s population are food insecure (NRADU). Out of those 1.2 million people, 453,000 of them are residents of Northern Ghana (NRADU). For the past few years MoFA has instituted food security programs in collaboration with other institutions and NGOs in Northern Ghana (NRADU). This program insures that seeds, fertilizer, weedicide and tractor services are provided to farmers (NRADU). The buildings that we are mapping do not include industrial buildings; instead we have found it more valuable to the region to map houses to ensure that all households are receiving the adequate amount of support from various programs to insure food security. Without each household being mapped the people within these helpful programs would not be able to find and help the majority of the people living in the Northern Region of Ghana. The roads that we are mapping range from motorways all the way down to footpaths- our group feels it is necessary to map all possible roads to ensure resilience. Without knowing the roadways or paths to get to each household to provide assistance, the region would continue to face the devastating problem that is food security. The next mapping steps that should be taken after the roads/buildings are mapped would be to map farmlands that could potentially produce food for Northern Ghana, and also putting a label on the roads/buildings that have been mapped would further help the problem of food security.

Kyler Allen

https://mofafoodsecurity.wordpress.com/food-security-situation-in-ghana/

Bibliography

http://www.bradtguides.com/destinations/africa/ghana/background-information.html

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/country_information/

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2860.htm

https://www.usaid.gov/ghana/agriculture-and-food-security

https://www.feedthefuture.gov/country/ghana

http://www.youthmappers.org/projects-1

http://osm-analytics.org/#/show/polygon:d%7CkA%7Dgd_AefCgCytAzOm%60Amn%40%60OkrA%60NifBbwB%7BOv_Cr%5E%7CgAjsA/buildings/recenc

Food and Agricultural Organization. 2015. The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress, Rome: FAO.

United States Agricultural Development Agency (2015). 2015 Economic Research Services Report. Food Insecurity in the United States.

Antwi KD, L. Conrad. 2016. Socioeconomic Determinants of Rural Households Food Access in the Northern Region of Ghana. Journal of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development. Vol. 4 (2): pp356-367.

https://mofafoodsecurity.wordpress.com/food-security-situation-in-ghana/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Region_(Ghana)

http://mapcarta.com/27643794/Gallery/81857320

Cole Edwards