MCC invested $203.5m into food security during Ghana Compact
An amount of $203.5 million, part of the $547 million Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Ghana Compact was invested into food security, an MCC factsheet dated May 15, 2012 and obtained by ghanabusinessnews.com has disclosed.
Areas of food security the investments went into were irrigation, technical assistance, rural finance, land tenure and rural roads, the document shows.
Rural roads had the highest investment with $90.4 million, followed by technical assistance ($62.2 million) and rural finance ($23.6 million).
The rest – irrigation, received $23.2 million with land tenure getting $4.1 million.
According to the US-run MCC, 10 agribusiness centers and three public pack houses were constructed in Ghana through the $19.8 million Post-Harvest Activity and it provided the “missing link between farmers and markets” by reducing post-harvest losses and preparing produce for export.
The factsheet indicates that more than 15,000 additional metric tonnes of pineapple and over 5,000 additional metric tonnes of mangoes have been exported as a result of these investments.
The MCC’s compact trained more than 66,000 farmers in over 1,200 farmer based organizations (FBOs) in Ghana’s commercial agriculture sector.
“The goal of this $62.2 million Commercial Training Activity was to make Ghanaian agriculture more productive, including boosting the production of high-value exports like pineapple, mango and Bird’s Eye chili pepper,” it said.
The Ghana Compact closed February 15, 2012.
By Ekow Quandzie