A Ghanaian chef works against waste to feed the hungry

Excess and waste are usually considered symptomatic of the affluent West but trained chef Elijah Amoo Addo knows these are problems too in his home country, Ghana.

Amoo Addo believed there was enough food in the west African nation to feed all of its nearly 27 million people, but more had to be done to educate and inspire people to help those in need.

The result was a charity, now called Food For All Ghana.

The process is simple and not unlike recent French legislation that forces supermarkets to donate unsold food to charities and food banks, which campaigners want to see spread across Europe.

Food manufacturers and suppliers are asked for unused and excess food or products approaching their best-before dates.

Every weekend volunteers visit orphanages, hospitals schools and communities using donated goods to cook for those in need and hand over ingredients for future use.

"We have kids who are out of school just because they can't get food to eat," Amoo Adoo, 25, told AFP.

"We have families who sometimes in the day can't even afford a plate of food.

"We have orphanages which serve as a shelter for homeless children also running short of food."

Social contribution -

At the New Life Nungua children's home in Accra's suburbs, the institution's founder, Nii Afotey Botwe II, said funding was a struggle and the help from Addo was welcome.

The donated food offered a change in the children's diets, providing them with variety the orphanage often couldn't afford to supply.

Among items recently donated to the home were potato chips, condiments and tomato juice for cooking. Food For All Ghana volunteers also cooked rice and meat for the youngsters.

According to the charity, more than 48,000 free meals have been supplied in this way in the last three years.

At the New Life Nungua children's home in Accra's suburbs, the institution's founder, Nii Afotey Botwe II, said funding was a struggle and the help from Addo was welcome.

The donated food offered a change in the children's diets, providing them with variety the orphanage often couldn't afford to supply.

Among items recently donated to the home were potato chips, condiments and tomato juice for cooking. Food For All Ghana volunteers also cooked rice and meat for the youngsters.

According to the charity, more than 48,000 free meals have been supplied in this way in the last three years.

Samuel Ato Aggrey, quality assurance officer at the Kwatsons food import and distributing firm which has been participating in the scheme, described the initiative as "a way of helping society".

A 2013 study conducted by the charity into waste in the supply chain and its economic and environmental impacts indicated that more than 25 percent of food in Ghana goes uneaten.

The report recommended that companies conduct regular "food waste audits", set targets to reduce waste, and called for the government to support recovery and public education programmes.

A 2016 Unicef report said 3.5 million children (28.3 percent) live in poverty in Ghana and 1.2 million of those live in households unable to provide even adequate food.

But reducing food losses by about 15 percent would provide enough food to feed more than seven million Ghanaians every year, Amoo Addo's charity suggested.