School Feeding begins restructuring - 31-day arrears for caterers cleared
The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) Secretariat has begun a broader restructuring under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection.
The reforms, the secretariat said, were to decentralise operations, enhance the quality of meals provided to schoolchildren, and ensure consistency and timeliness in caterer compensation.
The effort forms part of the government’s commitment to bolster the impact of the programme, which currently serves over three million pupils across public basic schools in Ghana.
“The GSFP Secretariat, under the supervision of the MoGCSP, has commenced a restructuring of the programme to fulfil the government’s commitment to decentralise its operations, improve the quality of food served and ensure consistency in the payment of caterers,” the secretariat said in a statement.
Disbursement
The statement further announced that the government, through the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), had paid the 31 days’ arrears owed to caterers under the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) for the first term of the 2024/2025 academic year.
The disbursement was confirmed in a press statement signed by the National Coordinator of the GSFP Secretariat, Hajia Fati Forgor, who thanked the government for the release of funds for the payment of the outstanding arrears.
“The GSFP Secretariat extends its appreciation to the government for the timely release of funds for the payment of outstanding arrears owed to the caterers,” the statement read.
The GSFP Secretariat expressed gratitude to the programme’s donor partners for their support, indicating that such collaborations remained vital to the sustainability of the initiative.
“We thank our donor partners for their continuous support and collaboration with the Government of Ghana to sustain the programme,” it said.
Background
The government increased funding for the Ghana School Feeding Programme for the current year, with an allocation of GH¢1.78 billion in the 2025 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, up from GH¢1.2 billion in 2024.
Presenting the Budget Statement to Parliament on March 11, 2025, the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, announced an increase in the feeding grant per child from GH¢1.20 to GH¢1.60.
He explained that the increment was necessitated by rising food prices and the need to sustain the programme to ensure that pupils in public basic schools continued to receive nutritious meals.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme was launched in 2005 as a pilot initiative to provide free meals to learners in public schools.
It is managed by the GSFP Secretariat under the supervision of the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection, in collaboration with international partners, including the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), and UNICEF.
Other partners are the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
