Beyond Corruption: The Political Economy of Ghana's School Feeding Programme

The recent public remarks by a former Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, suggesting that political interference undermined the effective management of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), have reignited an important national conversation. Much of the public debate has focused on whether her allegations are true. While that discussion is entirely legitimate, I believe we should ask an even more fundamental question.

Was political interference an unfortunate development that emerged over time, or was it embedded in the Programme's governance from its very inception?

My reflections are informed not only by my academic work in sociology and public policy but also by my experience as Deputy National Coordinator responsible for Monitoring and Evaluation during one of the most challenging periods in the Programme's history. Viewed from both perspectives, I have come to a conclusion that may be uncomfortable but is essential if Ghana is to strengthen its social protection programmes.

Corruption did not create the governance crisis in the Ghana School Feeding Programme. It flourished because the Programme was never sufficiently insulated from the political economy within which it was born.

That distinction is critical.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme was launched in 2005 as one of the flagship social protection initiatives of President John Agyekum Kufuor's administration. At the time, I publicly commended the government for what I regarded as a remarkable policy evolution.

A political tradition often identified with market-oriented economic policies had embraced an ambitious social intervention aimed at improving school enrolment, reducing hunger among schoolchildren, stimulating local agriculture, and alleviating poverty.

It was, and remains, one of the most visionary social policy initiatives in Ghana's Fourth Republic.

However, programmes of this magnitude are never merely administrative exercises.

They create employment opportunities. They generate procurement contracts. They mobilise local communities. They influence electoral perceptions. They become highly visible symbols of government performance. In every competitive democracy—and particularly in developing democracies where access to state resources often intersects with political competition—such programmes inevitably acquire political significance.

This should not surprise us.
Indeed, elected governments are entitled to pursue ambitious social policies and to receive political credit when those policies improve citizens' lives. That is the essence of democratic accountability.

The real challenge lies elsewhere.
The question is not whether politics should surround social protection programmes. The question is whether governments can build institutions strong enough to ensure that technical management remains guided by professionalism, evidence, transparency, and accountability even while the programme itself carries undeniable political value.

In my view, this is where the Ghana School Feeding Programme encountered its greatest challenge.

From inside the Secretariat, I observed an institution operating under two competing logics. On one hand was the perfectly legitimate political desire of an elected government to implement one of its flagship programmes successfully. On the other was the equally legitimate administrative responsibility to develop professional systems capable of surviving changes in political leadership.

Those two objectives should have reinforced one another.

Too often, they did not.
As the 2008 general elections approached, administrative decisions increasingly became intertwined with uncertainty about political transition, institutional survival, and individual career calculations. Decisions that should have been guided principally by programme performance were increasingly influenced by anticipation of possible political change.

The consequences extended far beyond personalities.

One of the most enduring lessons I carried away from that experience is that bureaucratic neutrality is far more complicated than many of our textbooks suggest. Public administrators do not operate in a political vacuum. Especially in highly contested democracies, they work within institutions shaped by electoral incentives, shifting centres of power, and competing expectations.

The challenge, therefore, is not to imagine a politics-free bureaucracy. The challenge is to construct institutions capable of ensuring that administrative decisions remain anchored in the public interest regardless of political change.

This lesson extends well beyond the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

As Ghana continues to invest in school feeding, cash transfer programmes, youth employment initiatives, agricultural subsidies, and other social interventions, we should recognise that good intentions alone cannot guarantee good governance.

Strong institutions matter.
Transparent procurement matters.
Professional recruitment matters.
Independent monitoring and evaluation matter.

Regular public reporting matters.
Institutional continuity matters.
Without these safeguards, even the best-designed social protection programmes remain vulnerable to the pressures generated by their own political success.

This is why I believe our current national conversation should move beyond identifying individual culprits. Holding public officials accountable is important, but accountability should not end with individuals. We must also examine the institutional arrangements that either constrain or enable poor governance.

If there is one lesson I hope Ghana draws from the present debate, it is this:

The tragedy of the Ghana School Feeding Programme is not that politics entered it. Politics was there from the beginning. The tragedy is that the institutions responsible for managing that political reality were never strengthened sufficiently to protect one of Ghana's most important social protection programmes from the very pressures its success inevitably attracted.

The future of Ghana's social protection agenda will depend not simply on who occupies ministerial office or who serves as National Coordinator. It will depend on whether we have the courage to build institutions whose professionalism is stronger than political transitions and whose accountability is stronger than partisan interests.

That is the conversation we should now be having.

Professor Emeritus Acheampong Yaw Amoateng, PhD.

Sociologist, Public Policy Analyst, and former Deputy National Coordinator (Monitoring and Evaluation), Ghana School Feeding Programme.

This article draws on reflections from Professor Amoateng's forthcoming autobiography, which examines the intersections of scholarship, public service, politics, and national development.

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