July 10, 2025, Accra
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana (MoFA) through the Statistic, Research and Information Directorate has released a new series of bulletins on the Cost of a Healthy Diet in Ghana. This series draws from the food prices collected weekly by MoFA in markets around the country, analyzing the retail price data in a new way to understand people’s access to food. The Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) indicator identifies the minimum cost for meeting Ghana’s National Food-Based Dietary Guidelines, which MoFA published in 2023, using locally available foods to meet requirements.
Discussions to develop the Cost of a Healthy Diet indicator began in Accra in 2016. Over the past decade, there has been growing attention to affordability of healthy diets as a core component of food security. The indicator is now monitored globally by the United Nations FAO and the World Bank as a metric of food security, reported annually in the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. It also supports progress toward a new SDG indicator of improving dietary diversity.
The CoHD is reported every quarter, using retail food price data that is collected by the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate of MoFA. The data is obtained from 190 markets across 16 regions in Ghana. The quarterly report, published on the MoFA website, includes an analysis of regional and monthly variations in CoHD, and items which are most often identified as least cost.
The newly-released MoFA bulletins also show the relative cost of each food group that contributes to a healthy diet, including vegetables, fruits, legumes / nuts / seeds, animal-source foods, starchy staples, and oils / fats. The results show vegetables and animal-source foods typically arising as the least affordable food groups.
MoFA is committed to ensuring food security for all in Ghana. Everyone should be able to access a healthy diet that meets Ghana’s dietary guidelines. Where they cannot, intervention may be called for. In addition to highlighting the potential needs for social safety nets, routine monitoring of the Cost of a Healthy Diet in Ghana sets the stage for developing policies and investments in the agriculture sector to address high costs or unavailability of certain food groups.
The publication of this indicator will be maintained within the national food security and nutrition monitoring system. It opens a new avenue to inform national planning and programming toward food security and nutrition in Ghana.
Issued by; Public Relations Unit. (MoFA)