Nutrition
Accountability in Nutrition: Who holds Ghana’s leaders responsible?
Ghana’s fight against malnutrition is undermined not by a lack of knowledge, but by lack of accountability.
Nutrition experts and policymakers alike know what works: exclusive breastfeeding, micronutrient supplementation, food fortification, school feeding programs, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
Yet, programs stall, targets are missed, and resources are underfunded with little consequence for those responsible.
Who is responsible when exclusive breastfeeding stagnates below global targets? Who answers for the fact that nearly half of Ghanaian women suffer from anaemia despite repeated pledges to improve maternal nutrition? Who explains why stunting rates remain at 18 percent when the target was 15percent by 2025? Who ensures that Nutrition for Growth (N4G) commitments made at the international stage are translated into local budgets and services? Who accounts for nutrition budgets that fall short of the 2-3 percent allocation recommended for effective programming? Etc.
Accountability must be made non-negotiable. Parliament must demand annual nutrition accountability reports from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), tracking not only policy promises but also tangible outcomes.
The NDPC, as the apex planning body, must take the lead in monitoring nutrition indicators across all sectors and ensuring that district-level plans integrate nutrition targets.
Civil society must step up, using evidence and data to spotlight the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Tools such as nutrition scorecards and citizen report cards can empower communities to track progress and demand answers. Media outlets must treat nutrition as a governance issue, not just a health story buried in lifestyle pages.
District assemblies, as the frontline implementers of nutrition programmes, must be held accountable for translating national policies into community-level action. They should report regularly on the status of school feeding programmes, community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) services and local food security initiatives.
The public also has a role to play. Citizens must demand better interventions that addresses their nutritional needs, by asking their representatives what concrete steps have been taken to improve nutrition in their communities. Communities can use vox pops, community radio, and grassroots dialogues to hold leaders accountable. The Food Systems Transformation and Nutrition Security (FSTNS) Cross-Sectoral Planning Group (CSPG), led by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), which serves as Multi-Sectoral Platform for Food Security and Nutrition should serve as a coordination hub where stakeholders review progress and identify bottlenecks in real time.
International partners must not shy away from asking tough questions about financing gaps and delayed reforms. Accountability should have teeth, public hearings for nutrition budget performance, independent audits of feeding programmes and performance-based funding mechanisms that reward results, not just promises.
Countries like Rwanda have shown that strong political commitment backed by rigorous accountability mechanisms can dramatically reduce malnutrition rates. Ghana can learn from such examples, adapting successful models to our own context.
Without accountability, nutrition will remain a political talking point instead of a development reality. Ghana cannot afford empty commitments. Our children deserve measurable results, and our leaders must be held responsible for delivering them.
Feature Article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition Project
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Ghana has nutrition policies. Ghana has nutrition targets. Ghana has nutrition programmes spread across multiple ministries and dozens of implementing partners.
What Ghana does not have is a single, empowered body responsible for leading, coordinating, and holding all this together. That is the gap a National Nutrition Council would fill, and stakeholders are calling for one now.
The case for a council
At a stakeholder engagement convened under the Nourish Ghana project in 2025, participants proposed the establishment of a National Nutrition Council to provide effective leadership and a governance framework for addressing malnutrition in Ghana. The meeting, which brought together policymakers, development partners, civil society organisations, and the media, highlighted a fundamental problem: nutrition responsibilities are fragmented across various ministries. Without a dedicated coordination body, efforts are duplicated, accountability is diffuse, and nutrition consistently loses out when budgets are tight.
The proposal echoes a model used in several countries that have made the fastest progress against malnutrition. Nigeria’s National Council on Nutrition, for example, recently pledged $107 million at the 2025 N4G Summit, a level of coordinated ambition that Ghana has struggled to match.
Ghana does have existing coordination structures worth acknowledging. The Scaling Up Nutrition Cross-Sectoral Planning Group (CSPG), established in 2012, was set up to harmonise planning, implementation, and monitoring of nutrition actions across sectors. It has produced real gains. But the challenge has been institutionalising those gains beyond project cycles, and analysts have called for an elevated national coordination body with presidential oversight to ensure genuine cross-sector accountability. A National Nutrition Council would go further, providing the dedicated financing and convening authority that the CSPG, as currently structured, does not have.
What a Council would do
A National Nutrition Council would provide political oversight and coordination across all sectors involved in nutrition, health, agriculture, education, social protection, and finance. It would track Ghana’s nutrition commitments, hold ministries accountable for delivery, and ensure that nutrition budgets are protected and spent effectively. Most importantly, it would give nutrition a permanent seat at the table where national development decisions are made.
The Time Is Now
Ghana made 10 commitments at the 2025 N4G Paris Summit. Translating those commitments into results requires a governance structure that does not currently exist. Establishing a National Nutrition Council is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is the institutional foundation without which Ghana’s nutrition ambitions will remain promises on paper. Leaders must act on this proposal without delay.
Feature article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition project
