Digital communication to reinforce Nutrition and household resilience in Northern Ghana led by Professor Robert Osei from Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana. Nutrition is critical for children’s growth and development in rural areas in Africa where families face the additional risks of climate-related shocks like drought. This project tests whether Nutrition related messages by mobile phones re-enforce the impacts of earlier development programing on families nutrition and resilience. The project’s broader goals are to investigate whether communication can ensure the sustained resilience of rural households and whether the impacts of those communications are different for women and men. The study also analyzes the costs and benefits of nutrition-related messages to guide the future scaling up of such programs.
The USAID Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) has an overall goal of supporting Ghana to increase self-reliance and a healthy and productive life for all citizens. Current inequalities biased against households in Northern Ghana require a systematic approach that takes these inequalities into account. This is particularly important as the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to linger on and exacerbate spatial inequality.
Programming that strengthens household nutrition could lay the foundation for planning Ghana’s development agenda with poverty and inequality at the heart of such a plan. This ALL-IN project includes an evaluation of the cost effectiveness of using a mobile phone platform to speed up behavior change. Fortunately for Ghana, mobile phone penetration is very high. This makes reducing poverty and improving families’ nutrition by communicating to smallholder farmers with mobile phones a real possibility.
