Ghana’s Government Statistician has urged policymakers to act early and target interventions precisely, warning that national food security averages are concealing growing structural pressures that are pushing households to sacrifice long-term stability for short-term survival.
Dr Alhassan Iddrisu made the call at the launch of the Food Insecurity Vulnerability Report, produced by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP), which draws on data from the Mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (mVAM) survey.
“National averages are not enough to inform effective policy,” Dr Iddrisu said. The report reveals that while most households are maintaining acceptable food consumption on the surface, about one in three is relying on medium to high coping mechanisms, with nearly one in four already making crisis-level adjustments.
Those adjustments include reducing dietary quality, borrowing to cover basic needs and in some cases selling productive assets or cutting household spending on health and education. Dr Iddrisu described this pattern as a fragile equilibrium. “Many households are managing today by sacrificing tomorrow,” he said. “This is not sustainable.”
The report identifies affordability, rather than food availability, as the dominant constraint in many communities, with high food expenditure burdens and constrained purchasing power driving vulnerability more than supply shortages. Vulnerability is described as concentrated and structural, not random. Northern Ghana continues to bear disproportionate risk, while households with limited education and those dependent on smallholder agriculture remain significantly more exposed.
The broader data shows that national food insecurity prevalence rose from 35.2 percent in the first quarter of 2024 to 38.1 percent in the third quarter of 2025, peaking at 41.1 percent in between, with the food insecure population climbing to 13.4 million at its highest point before easing to 12.5 million.
The report highlights a particularly acute gap in social protection coverage, with only a small fraction of households reporting access to any assistance, pointing to a disconnect between policy intent and on-the-ground reach.
Dr Iddrisu called on government, development partners and research institutions to sustain collaboration and translate data into timely responses. Priority actions outlined include improving targeting mechanisms, scaling social protection programmes and investing in climate-smart agriculture and diversified livelihoods.
He described the mVAM approach as a critical shift from traditional survey systems, which, while thorough, are often too slow to capture rapidly changing household conditions. The objective, he said, is to ensure decisions are grounded in evidence and translated into decisive action before vulnerabilities compound.
The report links food security to Ghana’s broader macroeconomic and development framework and to Sustainable Development Goal 2 on ending hunger and improving nutrition. The initiative is supported by the African Development Bank and the government of South Korea.
