The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) has called for stronger financing, expenditure tracking and accountability for nutrition programmes across sectors to improve Ghana’s nutrition outcomes.
Director-General of the NDPC, Dr Audrey Smock Amoah, said nutrition must be treated as a national development priority and not solely as a health-sector issue.
She made the call at a symposium held as part of the Micronutrient Forum 2026 in Accra, under the theme “Accelerating Nutrition Action Through Multisectoral Collaboration and Sustainable Financing: Lessons from Ghana.”
Dr Amoah said nutrition directly affects human capital development, education, productivity and resilience, making sustained investment and effective coordination necessary to achieve measurable results.
She noted that Ghana had established policies, institutions and coordination platforms for nutrition, but said the challenge was translating those arrangements into coherent implementation and sustained investment.
Ghana’s nutrition approach involves sectors including health, agriculture, education, water, sanitation and hygiene, social protection, local economic development and public finance.
Dr Amoah said the Food Systems and Nutrition Security Cross-Sectoral Planning Group provides a platform for these sectors to integrate nutrition priorities into national, sector and district development plans.
She, however, stressed that multisectoral collaboration should go beyond periodic consultations and influence how priorities are set, programmes are designed, resources are allocated and performance is assessed.
UNICEF Ghana Representative, Andy Brooks, also stressed the need for sustained and adequate investment in nutrition.
He said nutrition budget tracking could help identify where resources are being concentrated, where financing gaps exist and how domestic and partner resources can be better aligned with national priorities.
Brooks further emphasised the need to link nutrition financing to planning, budgeting and accountability processes.
In her closing remarks, Dr Amoah identified three priorities for strengthening Ghana’s nutrition response: improving coordination within existing national and decentralised planning systems; strengthening nutrition financing, expenditure tracking and accountability across sectors; and using evidence to scale interventions capable of delivering equitable and lasting nutrition outcomes.
She said the symposium had reinforced the importance of functional governance, sustained financing, coordinated implementation and accountability across sectors and levels of government.
