He said the funding was provided under the bank’s Food System Resilience Programme and would be used to procure fertiliser and seeds for farmers in drought-affected regions in Ghana, including the northern regions.

He mentioned the farm inputs as 117,188 tonnes of fertiliser, NPK urea, for $75 million and 3,266.5 tonnes of rice and maize seeds at a cost of $6.9 million.

Mr Opoku disclosed this when he responded to a question by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Keta, Kwame Dzudzorli Gakpey, on the floor of Parliament last Thursday, on how much funding Ghana had received from the international organisation to combat drought in the northern part of Ghana and how such funds had been utilised.

Based on the disclosure by the minister, the MP for Weija-Gbawe, Jerry Ahmed Shaib, asked him if he could assure the House that with all that expenditure, droughts in the northern part of Ghana were going to reduce drastically.

In answer, Mr Opoku said the expenditure on agricultural inputs was incurred before the current government assumed office on January 7, this year.

He said the expenditure was part of the drought-mitigating measures implemented by the previous government. 

“This money was used principally to procure fertilisers and seeds, and certainly you cannot use fertiliser and seed to reduce drought,” he said.

On specific interventions put in place to reduce the impact of drought, he said a lot of irrigation infrastructure had been put in place.

“We are providing solar-powered boreholes to ensure all-year-round production in the northern enclave and we are also constructing new dams and rehabilitating existing ones,” he answered.

Food security

The MP for Ho Central, Richmond Kpotosu, asked the minister what the ministry's projected number of months was for food security in case of any global pandemic.

In response, the minister said in general terms, a pandemic was an epidemic of an infectious disease that had a sudden increase in cases and spread across a large region, affecting a substantial portion of the human population.

He explained that food security was multidimensional in terms of availability, access, utilisation and stability.

Any projection of months of food security depended heavily on baseline stocks, supply chains, trade and response capacity, he said.

“To specifically estimate a plausible month for food security in case of a global pandemic depends on figures of Ghana's agricultural production, import dependency, reserve stocks and pandemic risk factors.

“This is based on international standards for strategic grain reserves of governments ensuring availability of food stock for three to six months, sometimes up to 12 months,” he said.

Mr Opoku retorted that the Government of Ghana (GoG) had resourced the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) to procure the excess grains for storage as a natural strategy to address any food shortage and also ensure revenue for farmers.

He also stated that the GoG had further pledged or made a commitment in the 2026 Budget for the same activity for NAFCO this year.