ActionAid Ghana (AAG) has launched its seventh Country Strategic Paper (CSP), with an overarching goal to help fight poverty and promote social justice in the next five years (2023 – 2028).
This paper comes in the wake of staggering statistics on poverty from the World Bank’s 7th Ghana Economic Update in 2022, and growing social injustice among vulnerable groups in the country.
Management of AAG emphasised that the current situation affecting the country and the world entirely calls for immediate measures and the attention of global, regional, national and community-level actors through community-centred approaches to implement progressive policies and legislations which address the strategic needs of affected people.
According to its Country Director (CD), John Nkaw, the CPS VII – christened ‘Active Citizenship for Social Justice’ – was informed by lessons learned, and conclusions and recommendations from AAGs operating three strategic priorities.
“We are promoting the green economy and building resilient livelihoods as the first strategic priority. Second, we are promoting women’s rights and decent jobs. And finally, we are promoting active citizenship; and through that, we encourage public accountability and gender-responsive public services,” he said.
He further explained that the first strategic priority seeks to address the unemployment rate among the youth, building their livelihoods around the green economy by making agriculture an attractive and lucrative venture for them to engage in. With this strategy, AAG will also promote agroecology and food sovereignty.
As a gender-responsive organisation, the second strategy will address zero tolerance for violence against women and girls as well as promote decent work in both formal and informal workspaces.
“We will centralise actions geared toward supporting government policies to combat the menace of domestic violence, sexual exploitation and harassment – particularly in the workplace. Women contribute about 80 percent of their time to performing domestic chores or work, yet it is usually not quantified. Hence, we will try to mitigate these occurrences by ensuring the domestic work is factored into national statistics, calibrated and recognised,” he explained.
In terms of the last strategy, AAG will build an active citizenry to ensure that more people are concerned with the actions of leaders at all levels; the state of the economy; the political environment, and everything that pertains to growth of the country.
Mr. Nkaw noted that having an active citizenship requires an in-depth knowledge and understanding of government policies. Therefore, his outfit will work with citizens to educate them on the policies – to be empowered in asking the necessary questions and becoming active citizens and not spectators.
To ensure that the outlined strategies in the CSP VII influence government decisions and policies, the CD for AAG said they will use the Human Rights-based approach – one of their development tools to engage government and also empower communities through policy education.
Chair-Board of Directors, AAG, Nana Yaw Okyere Aduachie, believes enduring the next five years will not be an easy task, but they will leverage on their strength and collaborate with government, civil society organisations and businesses to support the vulnerable, especially women.
