Today’s announcement supports Canada’s commitment to improving food security and stimulating economic growth in developing countries. Canada’s support for three food-security and livelihood projects in Ghana will be distributed as follows:
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Building Capacity for Sustainable Lives
The Government of Canada and McGill University are committed to improving the lives of women and children. This project in Ghana, with $3.5 million (2013-2018) builds on this longstanding commitment. Working in partnership with principal collaborators World Vision Canada and the University of Ghana, this new project will engage with local organizations to improve the food security, dietary quality and nutritional status of women of child-bearing age, adolescents and young children, while diversifying economic activities for as many as 21,000 people living in rural areas of the Upper Manya Krobo District of Ghana. This district is a largely underserved rural area in the southern part of the country, where most of the population engages in farming, fishing, and trading.
The Government of Canada and McGill University have been partners in international development since 1982. Over the years, Canada has supported more than 100 projects undertaken by McGill University in developing countries. These projects have produced results and made real differences in these countries’ most vulnerable populations.
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Resilient and Sustainable Livelihoods Transformation
Through the Canadian Hunger Foundation (CHF), this project involves a commitment of $19 million (2012-2018), to enhance food security and resilience for male and female smallholder farmers and their households in the three northern regions of Ghana, by increasing and diversifying agricultural production, income, and assets.
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Food Security through Co-operatives in Northern Ghana
In partnership with the Canadian Co-operative Association, this initiative, worth $7.7 million (2013-2018) will provide farmers with access to training and improved farm technologies. The initiative will also provide them with immediate access to funds through credit unions, giving them the option to store their harvests for later marketing. This will allow some smallholder farmers to move toward commercial farming and contribute to job creation and further development of the private sector.
Improving the health of mothers, newborns and children and reducing the number of preventable deaths are top priorities for Canada. In 2010, as part of its G8 presidency, Canada launched a global effort—the Muskoka Initiative—to mobilize global action to reduce maternal, infant mortality and improve the health of mothers and children in the world's poorest countries.
On the margins of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly in the fall of 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper co-hosted a high-level meeting on women's and children's health, identifying it as Canada's "flagship development priority."
Thanks to the Muskoka Initiative and subsequent global action, maternal mortality rates are declining and millions more children are celebrating their fifth birthday. Our common goal has not yet been reached, but it is within arm’s reach.
That is why the Prime Minister is hosting a high-level summit on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health from May 28-30, 2014, in Toronto. Together we can eliminate preventable deaths among women, children and newborns, and save the millions of lives that hang in the balance.
