Component 1:  Protect against hunger and build resilient livelihoods 

Under this component, the Project intended to support targeted households to maintain or increase production, food security, defence against the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change resilience through access to quality agricultural inputs to 35,000 households, provide cash transfers to 5,000 households, carry our market surveillance and strengthen ICT driven extension services and contribute to the reduction in the spread of COVID-19 through awareness creation and supply of protective equipment.   

Sub-component 1.1: Secured access to agricultural inputs and food supply

Supply of Personal Protective Equipment 
To minimize the spread of COVID-19, the Project organized sensitization campaigns, mounted related billboards and supplied Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) to key stakeholders including District Departments of Agriculture, local health facilities, and various agricultural Supply Chain Actors. In all, 26,700 Agric Supply Chain Actors in 61 districts benefited from this support.

Supply of Quality Agricultural Inputs: 
To maintain or increase production, food security, and climate change resilience of vulnerable value chain actors, the Project supported farmers with key inputs including fertilizers and improved seeds of rice, maize, soya, and vegetables in 2021. In all, 24,782 smallholder farmers across 14 regions were supported. 

Cash Transfer: 
This activity was entrusted to the World Food Programme (WFP) through an MoU signed between MoFA and WFP. To help the beneficiary households overcome hunger and prevent nutritional deficiencies, 4,676 vulnerable individuals were supported with cash. Each beneficiary received an average of GHS2,100 in three instalments. The cash transfer activity had a good impact on the households who have been able to fund family exigencies related to health and education with this transfer. This cash transfer has also enabled the recipients to cope with the distress and largely prevented them from falling into a debt trap. 

Market Surveillance: 
ESRF design intended to strengthen the government’s capacity to monitor local markets and carry out surveillance of inputs, food and grocery stores and output market prices in selected geographic areas and develop the capacity of FBOs in digital marketing and strengthen their marketing self-reliance and diversify output markets. 

The major activities undertaken include: (i) webinars with the theme “Digitalized Smallholder Market Access” were organized by WFP to share and exchange China and Ghana’s experience and practice on grain e-trading platform with the participation of 75 (35% women) comprising government and private sector stakeholders; and (ii)support to the Statistics, Research, and Information Directorate of MoFA (MoFA-SRID) to implement quarterly Food Security, Nutrition, and Market Monitoring System (FNSMS) to provide timely, relevant, and credible information for evidence-based policy formulation. With the ESRF support, the number of district coverage increased from 60 to 120. Six bulletins were produced and circulated in 2023 on the market situation. 

WFP’s Digital Financial Inclusion (DFI) activities under Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) was implemented as parallel financing to ESRF activities. Key activities covered include training on mobile money usage; use of an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code (dial 170) on MTN to learn about financial services; fraudulent practices adopted by the fraudsters to defraud women; savings; budgeting; PIN privacy; and other financial literacy topics. 

ICT-Driven Extension Services:  
The Project collaborated with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to undertake ICT-driven extension service. FAO undertook activities related to capacity building of 16 DAES e-extension desk officers and other relevant staff on video editing. A series of training sessions on the utilization of modern tools and software for agricultural content-based video production and editing has been conducted for 26 persons (18 Male and 8 Female). The capacities of the 16 regional e-Extension hubs have been assessed. Training Curricula and modules based on lessons and new digital tools, including gender equality and social inclusion have been developed. E-extension curriculum has been developed, validated, and deployed in the training of Master Trainers and the 16 regional e-extension hubs for subsequent e-extension delivery. Training has been conducted for e-extension hub members and Master Trainers on the production and delivery of e-extension services and gender. The developed training curriculum and modules have been used to train 57 (35 Male and 22 Female) Regional Officers including Master Trainers, Regional Directors of Agriculture, and Regional Extension Officers. 

Sub-component 1.2:  Income Generation activities and diversification of food and nutrition supply

Poultry:
To generate additional income and diversify sources of nutrition, ESRF in partnership with the Animal Production Directorate (APD) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has implemented the poultry (broiler) activity covering 1,138 farmers (659 males, 479 females and 364 youth) in 11 districts. Farmers with appropriate housing structures were selected and provided with technical training. The Project distributed 183,000 Day-Old Chicks, 402,550 kg of starter feed, 512,450 Kg of finisher feed and 370,741 doses of NCV vaccines.  The Project designed and operated a web-based monitoring mechanism – ArcGIS - to track and validate the distribution. Farmers have expressed their satisfaction with the initiative and some have started the next cycle of broiler production. 

Support for food conservation and preservation practices
One of the objectives of ESRF is to support smallholder processing groups, particularly women and youth groups, with livelihood equipment. Beneficiaries will also be trained in the use of small-scale food processing equipment for food conservation, preservation, and processing. This intervention is implemented in collaboration with World Food Programme (WFP). The commodities selected for the processing support include rice, cassava, pepper, soya, groundnut, maize, and shea butter. In all, about 230 Groups and individuals have been assessed and will benefit from this intervention. Procurement of the equipment is underway, with delivery scheduled for April- May 2024.