This year Agrihouse Foundation is committed to exploring more creative and innovative ideas that will have increased impacts on our projects and beneficiaries, Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, has noted.
“Last year, we focused on working smart. By doing so, we made the most of our internal and external resources to scale up our impacts. This year, we aim to build on the efforts we implemented in 2022, with more creativity and innovation,” she said in a meeting.
While expressing gratitude to sponsor organisations and stakeholders whose financial and technical support contributed to successes the foundation chalked last year, Ms. Akosa reiterated the need for more partnerships and collaborations this year, which she said is the way to sustain development and productivity within the agric sector. Last year, Agrihouse Foundation chalked a number of successes across the value chain through its interventional projects and collaborations.
Gathering of the Royals: the Gathering of the Royals, which the foundation initiated last year, brings together representatives from development partner agencies, government institutions, parliamentarians, embassies, policy-makers, researchers, academia, religious leaders, the civil society and agricultural value chain actors and stakeholders. The event has been designed as an experts’ thought-sharing and solution-oriented platform that will give these stakeholders the platform to elaborate on agricultural development projects and initiatives they are championing in their various clans and districts.
Last year, the event brought together fifty (50) queen mothers and traditional leaders to discuss agricultural development and highlight projects they are championing in their various clans and districts. The event hosted selected parliamentarians, development partners and corporative institutions to be part of the conversations around agric development, making room for practical, realistic and achievable solutions to be discussed. Through a Call to Action’s communiqué, policy directions aimed at strengthening sustainable farming and a women-friendly agricultural system were put together and presented to the political figures and organisational leaders who were present at the event.
Agricultural Students’ Career Guidance & Mentorship Dialogue Bootcamp (AG-STUD): This practical beginner agribusiness initiative is designed to develop agric students, beginner agribusinesses and start-up expertise while exposing them to the dynamics of the market through education and leadership programmes essential for achieving success in agriculture and agribusiness. In the past five years, AG-STUD-AFRICA has benefitted over 1000 agribusiness students and beginner agribusinesses to develop strong and bankable business plans. The Agricultural Students Career Guidance and Mentorship Dialogue Bootcamp (Ag-Stud Africa) benefitted about 60 students last year. Since 2018, over 700 agric students and beginner agribusinesses have participated in the bootcamp, developing strong and bankable business plans. The experience has empowered over 500 students from 30 different schools with entrepreneurship skills, and supported them with start-up capital to start their agri-businesses. About 250 beginner agribusinesses have been established by students who have participated in AG-STUD.
Livestock Poultry & Fisheries Trade Show (LiPF): The tradeshow aims to ensure all facets of the agricultural sector, including animal agricultural production, receive equal attention and resources. The annual event offers participants the opportunity to exhibit their products and services, engage in panel discussions and dialogues, and go through training sessions, such as livestock training session – piggery training session, rabbit training session, cattle training session, fisheries & aquaculture training session, grasscutters training session and snail training session. The trade show (LIPF) has attracted local and international animal farmers and exhibitors from countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia since 2019. The two-day event has empowered over 50,000 sub-holder farmers to venture into animal agriculture, with training and capacity-building skills in poultry, piggery, rabbit, cattle and snail farming. Over 90 percent of participants and exhibitors testify positively about the event, describing it as a perfect introductory training programme for animal farmers.
Women in Food and Agricultural Leadership Forum (WOFAGRIC) and Gold in the Soil Awards: This project was designed and first implemented in 2019 by Agrihouse to enable women develop their agricultural skills, motivate, mentor and build on their capabilities to becoming independent. WOFAGRIC, over the past years, has helped shape and build more professionals in the field of agriculture; and importantly, it has been a source of women empowerment. The two-part project has over the years acknowledged the industriousness of women in agriculture by awarding them through the Gold in the Soil Awards. This awards scheme goes a long way to motivate other women to venture into the field of agriculture business. Over the years, a number of the nominees for the Gold in the Soil Awards made entries into the National Best Farmers Award Scheme at district, regional and national levels.
About 7 of them have won laurels at the district and regional levels while 2 of them picked up awards at the national awards. Over 25 percent of participants are now thriving as agribusiness owners because of the agribusiness management training they received during the events. Most of the women have taken up leadership roles within their communities and regions as aggregators, NGO founders, women farmer organisation leaders, among others. In 2021, about 50 percent of women farmers – between the ages 25-65 years – recorded at the event managed 10 to 65 acres of farmland, with a number of them being women farmers with a physical disability.
Annual Pre-Harvest Agribusiness Conference and Exhibitions: the Annual Pre-harvest Agribusiness Conference and Exhibitions is the only project that was handed down to Agrihouse Foundation by USAID as part of the organisation’s exiting strategy. The event has become one of the leading and highly impactful interventional market linkage events on the Ghanaian agribusiness calendar, providing long-term market development opportunities for farmers and agribusinesses. The award-winning market-linkage platform promotes business partnerships among value chain actors, especially farmers, buyers, processors, government, development partners, transporters, input dealers, civil society, equipment dealers, financial institutions, telecom companies and policy-makers.
Pre-harvest culminates with conferencing events, presentations, exhibitions and marketplace for business-to-business meeting. It also serves as a dynamic platform for farmers to negotiate and seal contracts, and seeks to strengthen the capacity of farmer-based organisations (FBO’s), aggregators, processors and value chain actors for them to play a key role as agricultural market actors. It further assists farmers and agribusinesses to expand their businesses before and after harvesting.
Ghana Chicken Festival (GHA-CHICK): The event is aimed to encourage the purchase and consumption of Ghana chicken to Ghanaians; create a platform for households and stakeholders to be educated and informed about the significance of consuming locally bred birds – chicken, guinea fowl and turkey, coupled with informative fun-filled activities in an atmosphere of entertainment and relaxation. Last year, the 2nd edition of the festival (GHA-CHICK) brought together over fifty (50) households in a relaxed atmosphere, with great music and recreational games like Oware, Scrabble, Ludo and Monopoly, and the families sampled different meals made with chicken.
1 household, 1 garden initiative (1h,1g): The 1 household, 1 garden is an initiative collaterally intended to further scale up government’s ongoing efforts to support families and communities to be more self-reliant while its core objective is to provide Ghanaians a simple and easily accessible source of augmenting their daily food need without often stepping out beyond their homes. The 1 household, 1 garden initiative essentially aims at triggering a wave of self-sufficiency and enhanced nutrition through the ignition of interest in home gardening in the wake of COVID-19 to mitigate the effects of food accessibility.
The 1 household, 1 garden initiative, being funded by AGRA through USAID – Feed the Future Programme, has in its first phase empowered over 2000 households to become more self-reliant and conscious about food security. The households are freely provided 12 assorted vegetable seedlings, manure, garden tools, treated soil, training manual, garden structures, and given the needed support and gardening manuals to help them establish their garden and manage it.
International Farmers and Agribusiness Resilience and Sustainability Convention (INTAFAC): INTAFAC seeks to bring together farmers and the members of the agribusiness sector to influence transformation. With focus on public-private partnerships, investment opportunities significantly raise the bar and create an action-driven blueprint toward further agricultural development in the country. INTAFAC will set a stage for open and informed dissuasions and debates on major social, human and environmental obstacles that hinder the development of a buoyant agri-economic, market resilience and self-sustainable agri-institutions.
The convention will engage agri-leaders, players and experts from government, farmer-based organisations, development partners, finance, businesses, technology, academia and actors. They will share their knowledge and expertise on how the agricultural sector in Ghana can begin to focus, develop and adopt strategies, policies and techniques that will positively impact and scale up efforts in building a sustainable, commercially viable and all-inclusive agricultural sector. The event is expected to come off in March.
The Agri-Woman Marketplace: The marketplace seeks to support women agribusinesses recover, grow and promote their farm produce, products and services. It provides free exhibitions and marketing space for the women to sell and promote their products and services while opening up their access to markets. Fully sponsored by Agrihouse Foundation, the initiative empowers women-led agribusinesses as a way of helping them to recover fully from the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 200 women farmers and women-led agribusinesses have, so far, benefitted from the agri-woman marketplace event, which also offers opportunities for knowledge-sharing and capacity-building dialogues. The event has created networking opportunities for agri-women in areas, such as farming, processing, packaging, marketing, IT service providers, among others. This has led to an increase in their sales, with a number of them securing major deals with local and international companies that purchase raw and semi-processed agricultural produce.
AgriWatchgh News Portal and Mobile App: AgriWatchgh: AgriWatchgh is an agric-focused News Portal and a bi-weekly newsletter platform of Agrihouse Foundation that updates stakeholders with agricultural news, issues and trends regionally, nationally and globally. You can have access to relevant and timely agric news at www.agriwatchgh.com. AgriWatchgh news portal was initiated at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the foundation noticed the dire socio-economic implications the spread of the virus was having on the agricultural sector in the country and beyond. A year down the lane, AgriWatchgh New Portal has become a fast-growing, prominent news website among Ghanaians and international stakeholders.
AgriWatch News App: The fast-growing visibility and general acceptance of AgriWatch News Portal necessitated the design and implementation of the mobile news App, ‘AgriWatch News App’, making access to news on ‘AgricWatch News Portal easier and more convenient for readers. The mobile AgriWatch News App is on the Google Play Store. With these relevant and trustworthy news platforms, the foundation seeks to continue expanding it communications portfolio and make agriculture-related news more related, exciting and friendly to all Ghanaians and agri-stakeholders across the globe.
Agrihouse Communications
This is the sister company of Agrihouse Foundation, with personnel who have vast knowledge in Ghana’s agric sector. This background makes Agrihouse Communications the preferred corporate organisation serving the agric sector as well as for the entire sectoral stakeholders. With our practical and experiential public relations expertise, media relations and proven events management, our company remains high on the list in this special niche. Agri-comms provides a broad range of communication service packages designed to deliver the best communication derived successes to our clients, ranging from media relations, social media or digital communication, public relations, news media and result-oriented events.
