PG-HGSF launches case studies of social audits in Ghana and Kenya
The case studies are an important aspect of our learning component as they capture and share lessons learned from the pilot activities we conduct in our project countries. The following case studies highlight school feeding social audits conducted in Ghana and Kenya, explaining the basis and need for the audits and documenting their implementation and results.
Ghana
With an estimated market size of USD 640,000 annually, the school feeding programme in Ghana’s Sissala East District represents a reliable market for local smallholder farmers. However, SNV’s baseline study revealed that traders, caterers, and farmer organisations in the district lacked information about the food procurement and proposal process, district coordination meetings and crop requirements.
To support greater smallholder farmer inclusion in this market, and to increase community awareness and commitment to the local school feeding program, SNV introduced a social audit pilot through the Procurement Governance for Home Grown School Feeding project. This case study reviews two social audits that SNV conducted in Sissala East between February 2013 and March 2014. The case examines the successes and challenges of the audits and describes how they can be applied as tools to promote community empowerment and stakeholder accountability.
Kenya
The Kenyan Home Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme has the dual objectives of improving children’s participation in education, while simultaneously supporting local agricultural production by procuring foodstuff from local smallholder farmers. However, smallholder farmers, who are often parents of children that participate in school feeding programmes, lack adequate information about how the market functions. Furthermore, school feeding programmes in Kenya typically have weak accountability and transparency systems, lack citizen engagement and do not have inclusive decision-making processes.
In order to create more opportunities for smallholder farmers to participate in school feeding programmes, SNV is piloting social audits as a participatory mechanism designed to increase accountability by and for the programmes’ stakeholders. This case study highlights the use of social audits in the county of Elgeyo Marakwet through the Procurement Governance for Home Grown School Feeding (PG-HGSF) project, detailing the audit process, outcomes, lessons learned and recommendations.