Shea Network Ghana (SNG), a multi-stakeholder non- profit organisation, is committed to empowering about 5,400 women and girls under the ‘Gender Responsive Skills Development Training (GRSDT)’ programme.
The empowerment involved 3,510 men and will be taken through women’s equality drives and inclusivity, agricultural financial services, cooperatives and financial literacy training to boost Cocoa and Shea value chain entrepreneurship.
The Women’s Economic Advancement for Collective Transformation (WEACT) project seeks to uplift the beneficiaries through education and economic opportunities, will help increase access to innovative and viable gender-responsive business models while enhancing equal access to productive resources for women – included gender-responsive financial products and land ownership and use.
The five-year project is implemented by the SNG and Tungteiya Women’s Association with support from Global Affairs Canada and supervised by OXFAM Ghana, and seeks to address the economic barriers to women’s economic empowerment and directly give a voice to beneficiaries.
This came to light at the Women Economic Empowered ‘Trade Fair’ second-edition held in Tamale, Northern Region, to showcase potentials of women entrepreneurs in Shea production and processing to the market.
The Fair brought together one hundred and fifteen (115) women beneficiaries from five districts made up of 90 WEACT members and 25 members of the System Innovation for Women Economic Empowerment (SIWEE) project.
It was also in partnership with nine districts in the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Savanna, Western North and Western Regions of Ghana.
Madam Iddrisu Hubaida, WEACT Project Manager at SNG who represented National Coordinator Dr. Iddi Zakaria Batitoe, said the fair was to link the women to suppliers and buyers in areas related to their business plans; and provide financial assistance to allow them purchase the inputs needed for launching their entrepreneurship activities.
“We are committed to providing capacity training and mentorship for prospective women entrepreneurs in the Shea business sector,” she said.
According to her, the GRSDT is one of the WEACT components that seek to empower women financially – through initiatives such as women’s equality drives and inclusivity, agricultural financial services, cooperatives, financial literacy training, Cocoa and Shea value chain entrepreneurship, among others.
It also seeks to increase access to innovative and viable gender-responsive business models and enhance equal access to productive resources for women, including gender-responsive financial products and land ownership, she said.
She urged beneficiaries to take advantage of the opportunity to network, share ideas, exchange contacts and create symbiotic relationships among themselves and the dealers to help expand their businesses.
The Gender officer at OXFAM, Madam Fati Alhassan, said the project seeks to break economic barriers for women, and called on stakeholders to assist women progress and ensure they are financially stable and capable of supporting their families.
“We know that socially and culturally many barriers prevent women from progressing in their lives, and so this project is working to break those economic barriers such as access to lands, access to credit – and even the burden of domestic work, which becomes a hindrance to participating in economic activities,” she said.
“At Oxfam, we believe that empowering rural women is the surest way of enhancing development in the country,” she said.
Programmes Coordinator at Tungteiya Women’s Association, Alhaji Thomas Kofi Pang, stressed the need for more investment into rural women’s activities to help curb unemployment rates.
