Ghana: FAO Encourages Women and Youth-led Agribusiness Start-ups to Scale Up

The Deputy Regional Representative of FAO Africa, Ms Jocelyn Brown Hall addressing the women and youth-led agribusiness start-ups at a workshop in Accra

Accra, Ghana, August 3, 2019//-The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has encouraged women and youth-led agribusiness start-ups in Ghana to scale up their businesses despite limited resources.

This is because agricultural growth contributed to reduced poverty and food insecurity in the country, and propelled Ghana to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of poor and hungry people.

The Deputy Regional Representative of FAO Africa, Ms Jocelyn Brown Hall gave the encouragement when she opened a day’s technical workshop on women and youth-led agribusiness start-ups in Ghana on agribusiness sector in Accra.

She told the participants: “Agriculture sector is at the heart of the national economy, contributing around 20 percent to the country GDP and providing approximately 50 percent of total employment”.

“Most of the remaining poor people live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture. There is a need for more inclusive and sustainable agricultural growth to achieve the SDGs, including eradication of hunger and poverty”, Ms Hall who is also the officer in-charge of the FAO Ghana office, added.

Need for investments to create jobs

There is a need for investments to create jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities to increase productivity and add value to the sector through agribusiness and agro-industries development, according to her.

Ghana played an active role in the development of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems—responsible investment should empower women and youth.

She noted: “In Ghana, FAO is working with the government and development partners to establish a strong enabling environment where both young and old females and males benefit from the generation of decent rural employment and entrepreneurial opportunities through a range of interventions”.

Gender dimension
Inclusive agricultural development includes the gender dimension. Women are major agricultural producers, and often responsible for the production of food for local consumption, she said at the workshop which was occasioned by an online forum on agribusiness sector.

“Women have the potential in the development of agri-businesses and agro-industries when given access to inputs, finance, and markets.

FAO’s flagship publication the State of Food and Agriculture from 2010 stated that bridging the gender gap in agriculture could lift up to 150 million people from food insecurity”.

FAO Action
Ms Hall assured the women and youth-led agribusiness start-ups that the intensification of cooperation at the national and local levels needed for the realization of such principles.

In the ECOWAS region, FAO and other development partners are supporting a Parliamentarian initiative on gender equitable investment in agriculture and food security to create more effective legislation and policies, she noted.

“Enabling women and youth to save and make productive investment in all segments of the agricultural value chains is vital. Enhanced cooperation and dialogue between all stakeholders can lead to effective agricultural investment”.

FAO is supporting multi-stakeholder dialogues and online channels on different thematic areas, such as land tenure, information and communication technology, public private partnerships and women and youth-led agribusinesses.

FAO builds on existing efforts to enhance the engagement of women and youth through inclusive investment that contributes to food security, generates decent jobs to lead to rural transformation, according to Ms Hall.

“Strengthening partnerships between the key actors — such as youth and women’s groups as well youth and women’s led agribusinesses can act as a catalyst”.

Touching on support to the youth, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Authority, Emmanuel Asigiri said his outfit had piloted the Youth Livelihood Farms as a complement to the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme.

To this end, a 120-acre maize farm was cultivated in the Upper West Region for which 120 young people were enrolled on this initiative with 30 percent of them being female.

African Eye Report

 

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