TEDMAG to sector forces: Increase female participation in Agric
TEDMAG is urging the management of colleges of Agriculture in Ghana to make their institutions attractive to women and the youth
A Global Community Service Gender Specialist, Aba Amissah Quainoo says increasing the level of participation among women in Agriculture will significantly improve upon yield and productivity.
She made the comments at a one-day Global Community Service Stakeholder Consultation Workshop organised by the Technical Education Development for Modernising Agriculture in Ghana (TEDMAG).
The Global Community Service Project, co-funded by TEDMAG, is an initiative for “Women Entrepreneurship: Capacity Building for Female Entrepreneurs from the Agricultural Colleges in Ghana”, promoting female empowerment, that is piloted at Damongo Agricultural College and Ejura Agricultural College & Mechanisation Centre.
“I actually have an agribusiness and we find that the quality of crops produced by female farmers is higher than that Produced by the male farmers, we all can also find that beyond production, women are engaged in other areas of the food chain such as, agricultural processing, and trade.”
“So, it just seems to be a natural path that if we increase the capacity of women, they can do, it better and give us more output”, Aba Amissah Quainoo said.
The goal of the stakeholder consultation workshop was to seek input from the project’s funding partners, beneficiary agricultural colleges, government representatives, women in agriculture, community leaders and other key partners to drive the vision and direction of the pilot project to.
TEDMAG Principal Investigator and Lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada Professor Mary Buhr, said “we want these students to be able to create their own careers in Ghanaian agriculture. They could work in production like producing food or they could work in processing or selling or marketing any of these different aspects.”
“We want them to have. the skills and the confidence to build their own businesses or to be very effective in supporting other businesses where they might find jobs. In particular with the global community service project, we are focusing on young women.”
TEDMAG aims to among other things, establish a pilot Gender and Women’s Study Initiative (GWSI) and roll-out at 2 agricultural colleges in Ghana to promote culturally responsive pedagogy; Develop coaching and mentorship programs for young women at the colleges; and Create awareness of female agripreneurial capacity.
The Board Chairman for the Agri-Business Incubation Hub for the Agricultural Colleges, Prof. George Oduro Nkansah hinted that plans are underway to set-up Agric incubation hubs in all colleges of Agriculture in the country.
These hubs, he explained will organise pitches after which agribusinesses, especially those of women will be funded and equipped to grow and develop.
Attendees of the workshop, including self-empowered communities, Principals of colleges, female tutors, and students expressed delight in the initiative.
Reporting by Philip Bright Abutiate in Accra
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