Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, has identified financial mismanagement, rather than a lack of food, as the primary cause of the ongoing food crisis in Senior High Schools (SHS) across Ghana.
Speaking on The Big Issue on Channel One TV with Selorm Adonoo on Saturday, January 18, 2025, Asare emphasized the need to improve cash flow management between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education to address the persistent food shortages effectively.
“The cause of the food crisis in our SHS is not a food issue; it is a financial issue. The suppliers delay in supplying because you owe them. So, if we don’t re-engineer the cash flow of the Ministry of Finance and let it meet with the cash flow of the Education Ministry, specifically with respect to free SHS, we will continue to have food shortages even if schools are procuring their food,” he said.
Asare highlighted that delayed payments to suppliers, particularly smaller ones, exacerbate the problem, making it difficult for them to sustain their operations.
“Also note, when you owe smaller suppliers beyond 90 days, they will be in trouble. You can owe bulk suppliers because they may have other goods or Letters of Comfort (LC) and other credit instruments they can rely on.
“But at the district level, they are small-scale suppliers. The extent to which they can accommodate you locking their cash and still supplying you is limited. So, if we are decentralising to the senior high schools, we must improve upon the cash flow. Otherwise, you will only transfer an inefficiency from the centre to the periphery,” he explained.
Asare’s comments come amid growing concerns about food shortages in many senior high schools across the country, where students are often left without adequate meals.
The John Dramani Mahama administration has pledged to decentralize the food procurement system, allowing headmasters and headmistresses of individual schools to procure food locally instead of relying on central government supplies.
