Graphic, WFP hold technical stakeholders breakfast meeting today

The Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL), in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), is organising a business technical stakeholders breakfast meeting to harness the energy and commitment of Ghanaian youth as a gender-inclusive and climate-friendly engine.

The meeting is also intended to help tackle the country’s deep-rooted post-harvest challenges and to further encourage food and nutrition security as well as create livelihoods, especially in rural and marginalised communities

The event which is taking place today at the Labadi Beach Hotel is on the theme: “Transforming Agriculture Productivity in Ghana: Enhancing Incomes of Smallholder Farmers through Reduction in Post-Harvest Losses.”

Activities lined up for the event include the launch of the Post-Harvest Technical Working Roundtable Group, a panel session featuring agribusinesses and equipment suppliers and various discussions aimed at fostering collaboration between government agencies, the private sector, civil society and development partners.

The WFP and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) will co-chair the Technical Working Roundtable Group, which will be instrumental in advancing the objectives of the WFP’s MasterCard Foundation Agribusiness for Youth Employment Programme, a $15-million initiative to reduce post-harvest losses for over 100,000 smallholder farmers.

The Director, Marketing and Sales of GCGL, Franklin Sowa, explained that the event was part of the company’s efforts to provide solutions to the problems that the country was facing in the agricultural sector.

“We believe strongly that by getting our agricultural sector working well and right, we will be able to solve a lot of the problems we have from food security to nutrition, entrepreneurship and healthy lifestyle,” he said.

Mr Sowa said through the partnership with the WFP, agriculture would be made attractive, exciting and more rewarding. He said the farmer would be provided with  different solutions, input material, equipment and training, to ensure that they were doing meaningful farming.

During the event, Mr Sowa said there would be an inauguration of a technical committee that would work on the project.

After the inauguration, he said there would be monthly conversations as well as quarterly meetings to take updates, analyse performance, track performance and improve on whatever they were doing.

“The main focus is on post-harvest losses because the post-harvest losses is about 40 per cent of the produce of smallholder farmers and you know that is not good at all, and so we are focused on how we can enhance their ways of farming and the quality of seedlings to make sure that they are getting the right output, the right outcomes, the right storage and connect them to the right markets,” he said.