The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) has called for stronger support for women farmers and agribusiness operators to improve their access to land, finance, markets and other economic opportunities.
The call was made in Accra yesterday at a Learning and Exchange Café organised under the ‘Leveraging Collective Power for Inclusive Sustainable Development Project.’
The project is being implemented by NETRIGHT with support from the STAR-Ghana Foundation through the Action for Voice, Influence and Inclusive Development (AVID 2) initiative.
Addressing participants, the Programmes Manager of NETRIGHT, Cynthia Sunu, said the project, which began about 18 months ago, had helped to strengthen women’s capacities, improve their engagement with institutions and promote more inclusive systems for economic empowerment.
She indicated that the project had recorded encouraging results, with many women adopting improved farming practices, strengthening their business management skills and taking more active steps to engage service providers and institutions.
Ms Sunu noted that although the progress had been gradual, it reflected the resilience of women farmers and the positive impact of targeted interventions aimed at improving their livelihoods.
She stressed that learning remained central to NETRIGHT’s work and underscored the need to continuously assess what works and what does not in order to design more effective programmes.
According to her, the Learning and Exchange Café was designed to provide a platform for stakeholders to share experiences, reflect on lessons learnt and generate ideas to shape future interventions.
She explained that the organisation’s approach was to ensure its work evolved based on real experiences and evidence, adding that the café created space not only to share ideas but also to listen, reflect and learn.
The Executive Director of NETRIGHT, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, said women continued to play a critical role in agricultural production, processing and trade, but remained disadvantaged in accessing productive resources.
She pointed to structural challenges such as insecure land tenure, limited access to formal credit, inadequate extension services and weak integration into agricultural value chains as major constraints to women’s economic progress.
Ms Akakpo further noted that many women lacked timely and practical information about available opportunities, services and processes, making it difficult for them to fully benefit from development interventions.
She explained that the project was designed to respond to these challenges through capacity-building programmes, knowledge-sharing sessions and multi-stakeholder dialogues aimed at improving women’s access to economic resources and enhancing their decision-making power.
According to her, beneficiaries were increasingly applying new knowledge and skills in practical ways, including adopting agroecological farming methods such as intercropping, composting and crop diversification.
BY AGNES OPOKU SARPONG
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