Urban food security in Ghana: a policy review

This policy review aimed (i) to investigate how urgencies such as urbanisation and climate change are recognised in the current policies of a low-income country, and (ii) to investigate how food security, and urban food security in particular, interacts with these policies. Ghana is used as an example. The policy review revealed that the agricultural, nutrition and health, spatial development and climate policies dealt with one or more aspects of food security within the food system framework. The overall conclusion is that the aspects of food security are still covered by the traditional policies: agriculture mainly deals with production, distribution and exchange of food. Nutritional value and food safety, for instance, are main concerns of the health and nutrition policy. However, Ghana is developing the Long-Term National Development Plan (LTNDP) which combines several policies. Food safety is also increasingly considered for the exchange of food from an export perspective: export requires particular food quality standards. The results of our policy review confirm that the integration of food security elements is still in an early process of development. In addition, the urban aspect of food security was hardly considered in the policies relating to food security in Ghana. This review was explored for (urban) food security in Ghana. It is likely that results for other African countries or other low-income countries in other continents would have yielded similar results.