Over the past three years, the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), under the ‘Green Employment and Enterprises Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn) Project’ funded by the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), has been on a journey to impact the lives of thousands of Ghanaian women in the Ashanti and Western Regions of Ghana through a mix of services, including short-term jobs, skills development, and access to financial services.
As part of the commemoration of Women’s Month and the 2023 International Women’s Day last month, UNCDF is glad to release its ‘Album of Impact, “Empowering Ghanaian Women the GrEEn Way.’ In this piece, which is the first of a monthly column to be published in the B&FT, UNCDF shares stories and testimonials of GrEEn women champions like Linda, Najat, Comfort, Patience and others who now drive change in their communities.
Introduction
More than 57,000 women have benefitted from products and services created under the GrEEn Project in the Ashanti and Western Regions of Ghana. The women were able to access over GH¢3,143,906 credit to support the growth of their businesses and jointly saved up to GH¢1,892,642 to build their financial health. (Data as per Q2, 2022).
Those are only a few of the rewarding results that the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) puts at the forefront to commemorate Women’s Month and International Women’s Day in Ghana, where we implement the GrEEN programme. The Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn), funded by the European Union through the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), aims at creating greater economic and employment opportunities for women and other groups like youths, returning migrants and MSMEs. GrEEN was launched in 2020 and focuses on the Ashanti and Western Regions.
One of the key components of the project is boosting access and usage of financial services and leveraging digital as a contributing factor for the empowerment of target groups, especially women, who are too often left behind. To achieve this objective, UNCDF delivers impact by piloting activities on innovative digital solutions, including channelling diaspora investments through crowdfunding, remittance-linked services, micro-insurance, digital bookkeeping, financial education and job opportunities through climate adaptation projects.
A snapshot of UNCDF’s focus on women as builders of digital economies is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYjXTI7eFPU [preview of the video]
*****
“This project has transformed my farming business. Before, my maize yield was very poor, but my yield has been a miracle since accessing high-quality inputs and using improved seeds and training in good agricultural practices. I can now manage my finances and care for my family’s needs, including my daughter’s university education,” said Rosemary Gyimah, a smallholder farmer in Ejura Nkwanta.
Rosemary is one of the many women whose lives have been transformed by the GrEEn project.
To celebrate GrEEn women champions, in this collection of stories and testimonials, UNCDF shares stories of women, like Rosemary, who now leverage financial services to grow their businesses and improve the quality of their lives. Linda, Najat, Comfort, Patience, Alberta, Gloria and Joyce share their stories with you.
#IWD2023 #DigitalEmpowermentForHer #EmbraceEquality
DFS+ for women and by women
Linda Naa Martin
Linda Naa Martin, a 37-year-old mother of three children and a teacher in Akumadan in the Ashanti Region, is one of the 7,378 women agents Zeepay onboarded to reach rural communities. Linda took advantage of this job opportunity, which provides her with an additional source of income and gives her community direct access to financial services. And now, Linda commits her weekday afternoons and sometimes Sundays to serving community members.
“My dream is to see my children acquire quality education to enable them to have a bright future. With the profit I make as an agent and my salary as a teacher, I can now support my husband in taking care of the family by, for instance, contributing to paying the children’s fees. I also invest part of my income to fall on in the future.”
Zeepay Ghana, through its partnership with UNCDF, is reaching thousands of women in the Ashanti and Western Regions to access a full-fledged mobile money wallet and leverage remittance in a more affordable way. So far, 31,775 women have benefitted from Zeepay’s digital solutions.
The uniqueness of Zeepay’s offering in attracting many women is to provide an additional incentive to encourage them to build and maintain their financial resilience. Zeepay provides a GH¢5000 monthly microinsurance coverage against health, disease, death and accidents for women remittance receivers. Diaspora members can support these vulnerable women by contributing to this insurance coverage.
Through collaboration for the GrEEN project, Zeepay deepened its agent network in the two regions, onboarding thousands of women agents who increased access and proximity to underserved areas. Zeepay has extended its agent network by focusing on women as drivers of user acquisition for other women, with a clear impact on job creation in the project areas.
Channelling remittances to improve economic realities of women – returning migrants
Najat Mohammed
Najat Mohammed is a returning migrant and the owner of Agro Foods Ghana Limited. She benefits from the partnership between UNCDF and PayAngel, an African market remittance and cross-border payment specialist that allows Ghanaians in the diaspora to remit money conveniently and safely to institutions, organisations, merchants and vendors in Ghana.
“As a growing company, my objective is to contribute to reducing post-harvest losses, food insecurity and malnutrition, and create jobs for women, youths and smallholder farmers. I wanted a solution to attract potential diaspora customers and receive payments without any extra charges to these customers as well as keep my products at the advertised price. Thanks to PayAngel’s Direct to Merchant Remittance platform, my customers can send payments at no fee. At the same time, I receive the funds directly through the platform without constantly sharing my account or mobile wallet details. Thanks to PayAngel’s D2MR, my business will grow and get international exposure.”
Using a Direct to Merchant Remittances platform, PayAngel through GrEEn brings new remittance-linked services to Ashanti and Western Regions in Ghana. Ghanaians in the diaspora can more easily remit, save, invest and pay directly for school and healthcare fees and to institutions and vendors. The partnership also allows PayAngel to expand its cross-border payment platform to project areas; business owners can now use the platform, allowing them to access international markets.
This is a game-changer for businesses run by returning migrants, like Najat, who have strong links with international clients as a result of their time abroad. Using PayAngel’s payment platform, they can transact business efficiently with the market available in their former country of residence.
Reducing post-harvest losses and increasing yield for female farmers
Comfort Asare
She lives at Mampongsu in the Wassa District in the Western Region. She is a cocoa farmer who struggled to feed her family because of her consistently low yield, mainly due to a lack of funds and her low level of financial literacy. Comfort joined Grow For Me, a Ghanaian agricultural financing platform for one farming cycle and has already benefitted from financing support and financial literacy training through an Interactive Voice Response system. Comfort sees a significant improvement in her farming work.
“I struggled to provide for my family solely through my cocoa farm as my maize yields were always low due to my haphazard planting methods. However, thanks to Grow For Me’s input financing and guidance in good agricultural practices, my maize farm is now thriving and among the best in my district.”
Last year, UNCDF, with the support of the European Union Trust Fund (EUTF), partnered with Grow For Me – an innovative Ghanaian agricultural financing platform, to provide financial and technical education, and access to finance and markets by channelling diaspora investments in the Ashanti and Western Regions.
The project has so far assisted 681 women in turning around their farm businesses. Comfort, a leader in her community, is one of the beneficiaries and has encouraged other women to participate in the Grow For Me initiative. Her group was recently awarded their district’s Best Women’s Farmer Group.
Lending facilities for women traders excluded from financial sector
Patience Nusenu
Patience Nusenu, the CEO of Pat-Joben – a small trading enterprise, was introduced to Pezesha, a crowdlending platform when she struggled to get funds to keep her business afloat. Having benefitted from financial education, financial management, and eventually making better business decisions, she is on her 4th cycle loan of GH¢8000.
“I can constantly restock my shop to serve my customers well. Getting a loan to stock my shop and run the business efficiently was initially difficult. However, being a customer of Pezesha means I have peace of mind to focus on my business and expand it. Thanks to the financial education we receive, I am a better manager of my funds now; and I have a good repayment history, making it easy for me to access a loan anytime I need it.”
Due to their perceived high risk, access to finance from formal financial service providers – such as commercial banks – has always been challenging for MSMEs, especially for women-led MSMEs who struggle more with collateral requirements and registration documents, for example. UNCDF, under the GrEEn project, pilots solutions to bridge this gap.
Pezesha’s crowdlending and peer-to-peer solution is an example of a solution piloted under the GrEEN project. It has reached more than 600 women businessowners, enabling them to access loan facilities and financial education, boosting access to capital for growth and increased capacity-building to make better financial decisions.
A strategic collaboration making women-owned MSMEs a part of the digital economy
Alberta Quist
This is the story of Jiffa Trends, owned by Alberta Quist, who uses the Oze application as a beneficiary of a partnership between Oze and Ecobank Ghana’s Youth Banking division under the GrEEn project to improve access to finance.
“I produce hand-made fashion artefacts and accessories from recycled paper, plastics and fabric. My major challenge since I started my business in 2018 has been access to capital and labour, which slowed down my growth. My inability to access capital had to do a lot with my manual bookkeeping, which I lost track of sometimes and couldn’t keep reliable data. However, going digital to keep records has ensured that my data is up-to-date and protected. This makes auditing easier and less stressful and has opened me up to opportunities helping me to grow my business.”
With the Oze mobile app, business owners can keep financial records and efficiently manage their businesses, while Ecobank gives access to full-fledged digital banking financial products. This is particularly important for women-led MSMEs who usually have less time as they need to take care of the household.
In this UNCDF partnership, the GrEEn project is boosting the financial inclusion of young female businesses by making sustainable business solutions available to those in the rural areas and assessing the uptake and usage to overcome barriers linked to low digital literacy levels in peri-urban and rural areas of Ghana.
Short-term job opportunities, training and basic financial services for women to contribute to their communities
Gloria Addae
Gloria Addae is a 38-year-old mother of four. A hairdresser turned construction worker; she is a typical beneficiary of ‘Cash for Work’ under the GrEEn project. She is working at the site of a culvert that is expected to improve access to the local hospital which had previously been cut off during rains and heavy floods due to the devastating effects of climate change.
“There is no water and electricity in this community.” “Bad road conditions make it difficult to access the hospital when we have sick children.”
Gloria is now hopeful that while her economic situation improves through working on this project and later opening her salon, her community will also be uplifted to enable others like her to give their children decent lives.
Providing temporary short-term job opportunities that empower women financially and help them acquire skills as they participate in the construction of climate adaptation projects is what Cash for Work does in Ghana’s Western and Ashanti Regions. Cash for Work is part of the GrEEN project, implementing the Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) facility in Ghana – an international mechanism for channelling climate finance to local governments for locally-led climate adaptation.
GrEEn takes advantage of the short-term job opportunities these workers have to fully equip them with additional services needed in their journey toward economic independence: in-depth skill training and access to financial services; namely: payments and savings accounts.
Financial literacy as a key condition for women to be economically resilient.
Joyce Naa
Joyce Naa, from Wassa in Ghana’s Western Region, is one of the empowered women beneficiaries of the Fidelity and Viamo partnership under the GrEEn project that makes financial education available through IVR.
“I have always known about money and the need to save; however, it was not a key focus for me, and even when I saved a few Ghana cedis, I spent it impulsively. Being introduced to this project and getting daily financial literacy training on my phone has completely changed my approach to saving and investing my money. I am now able to set realistic targets and make sure I make the right investment decision. Now, I have a relationship with a financial institution – Fidelity Bank Ghana, where I can easily and safely save and invest.”
People need appropriate information and literacy in financial matters to make informed financial decisions to improve their lives. With women, access to such digital and financial information and education is even more challenging due to restrictive societal norms.
This is why UNCDF mainstreams financial literacy across all its interventions in Ghana, with a particular focus on women as they are the most in need. In the Western and Ashanti Regions, GrEEn is working with Fidelity and Viamo to make financial literacy available through IVR in local languages to empower vulnerable women and accompany them in their journey toward economic independence.
After almost two years after launch, GrEEn and its partners have reached more than 24,192 women with adapted training content on the Efie ni Efie (Home Sweet Home) platform.
About the GrEEn project
UNCDF is bringing its expertise in promoting financial inclusion and inclusive economies to support job creation under the ‘Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn)’ Programme funded by the European Union Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). This programme will contribute to addressing the root causes of irregular migration through green and climate-resilient local economic development and improving prospects of beneficiaries by creating employment and enterprise opportunities in selected sectors and regions, specifically Ashanti and Western Regions. The action aims at supporting job creation in regions of departure, transit and return of Ghana, creating local financial ecosystems that facilitate the development of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and enabling the transition of local economies to green and climate-resilient development.
Supported By:
