I'll be heading to the Upper West region of Ghana! More specifically, the Lawra district is where I'll call home this summer.
The Upper west region has about half a million people, with 85,000 people in the Lawra district alone.
Ghana with its 10 official regions, is one of the best performing economies in Africa. Overall poverty has declined from 52 percent in 1992 to 28% in 2006, and Ghana is on course to exceed the 2015 MDG of halving her poverty.
However, despite the recent economic expansion, the structure of the economy has not changed substantially. The economy continues to be largely dependent on agriculture. Agriculture is constrained by low productivity farming practices, poor infrastructure, land tenure uncertainties, gender inequities and uncertain access to traditional exports (cocoa, gold and other natural resources, still account for almost half of the exports).
Additionally, the overall poverty levels are declining, socio-economic and regional disparities are increasing and are linked to the lack of structural change in the economy. There is a strong urban rural difference in poverty indicators, with deprivation level substantially higher in some rural areas. Poverty is highest in in three northern regions (Northern, upper West and Upper East) and in rural coastal zones.
In terms of people engaged in agricultural production, the majority are small farmers involved in subsistence agriculture, or semi subsistence. About 80% of agricultural production is from smallholder family operated farms, mainly below one hectare. Larger holdings produce mainly cash crops such as oil palm, rubber and pineapples. For food production the small scale farming predominates. The majority of the small scale farmers are women, illiterate and aged, and they produce the largest proportion of food crops.
Some of the objectives of the placement:
•Support agricultural extension agents as they develop methods and techniques for facilitating farmer solutions to farmer problems.
•Introduce the Agriculture as a Business curriculum as one method of facilitating farmer problem solving.
•Support ministry staff who have taken on a change project within the district to implement their change project, monitor, document and share results.
•Strategize about future EWB activities in the Upper West Region
Basically, as my EWB Coach/team leader Suzanne described, the program tries to put the power to innovate and guide development in the hands of farmers and district staff themselves. It aims to enable farmers and district staff to find their own solutions to the problems that they face, instead of being forced to accept solutions from outside NGOs or government offices. This is a bit different from what the rest of the EWB crew is doing in agriculture and the program is still very new, so plenty of steering and use of imagination to be used over the next while.
Three of us will be working in the district: Stacey from U of O, myself and Suzanne as our long term overseas staff/coach who has been in the area for 8 months now. Here I was thinking I would be dropped off in the middle of one of the most remote parts of Ghana.
