Ghana: Food for Thought

The most obvious signs of this poverty are found in the north of the country, where most of the population are small scale subsistence farmers who have to battle with poor soil quality, an erratic rainy season, and recurrent floods and droughts. These problems in turn often lead to serious food shortages and high rates of malnutrition.

If you are malnourished, [if] you are hungry right from childhood, it affects who you become in the future. Dr James Duah, King's Village Health Centre, northern Ghana

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), four out of 10 children under the age of five in northern Ghana are chronically malnourished, meaning they will not be able to meet their full growth potential. Some of them, to put it even more starkly, will die for lack of food.
This is why, despite its sunnier long term prospects, Ghana still receives tens of millions of dollars' worth of food aid from the international community.
But while these generous annual donations, from the WFP and others, are carefully calculated to provide sustenance to all those in dire need, somehow they never prove to be enough.
The food arrives in bulk at government-run distribution centres and then quickly runs out. All too often those in search of help turn up to be told that that stocks are again running low or that promised deliveries have not yet been made.
At the King's Village Health Centre in Tamale, northern Ghana, which has helped thousands of malnourished babies and children, operations director Dr James Duah is puzzled about these shortages and worried about the consequences.
"About 40 percent of all under-fives in the communities here are stunted and malnourished. It has an effect on mental abilities ... If you are malnourished, [if] you are hungry, right from childhood it affects who you become in the future," he says.
So what happens to all the food that is donated? Are the deficits merely the consequence of some bureaucratic hold up in the supply chain or are there more sinister forces at work.
In this episode of Africa Investigates, Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas sets out in search of the answers and unveils a truly shocking tale of theft and corruption.
His undercover investigation reveals how officials of the Ghanaian Health Service – some of the very people tasked with distributing aid to starving children - are stealing and selling it for their own gain. Filming secretly, Anas and his team pose as buyers and make contact with two of the corrupt officers. They are shown into storehouses where boxes of donated food – still bearing the logos of international aid agencies – are piled high. It quickly becomes clear, the stolen goods are all for sale.
When Dr James sees the footage he is appalled. "In this community where there are so many malnourished children, and these people are deprived of what could save their lives … it is crime. It is the highest crime."