Project profile — Greater Rural Opportunities for Women 2

This project aims to reach an estimated 40,000 women smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs in the poorest regions of northern Ghana, most at risk of COVID-19 pandemic-related rise in food insecurity. This project supports women working in three crop value-chains. Project activities include: (1) offering agricultural and financial capacity-building; (2) broadening women’s access to labour-saving, innovative technologies through existing commercial outlets; (3) engaging male gender advocates; (4) working with traditional leaders; and (5) working directly with individual households to raise awareness of the respective contributions of all members. This project helps to shift social norms around the distribution of domestic work and facilitate women’s continued success and empowerment in the future, by raising awareness within communities of the importance and overall benefits of women’s economic participation. This project also boosts women farmers’ resilience to climate change by promoting diversification of crops and ecologically sound agricultural, food sustainability and organic waste management practices.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved business environment and access to production means, including finance, training, and land for women farmers, entrepreneurs, and agribusinesses in selected agricultural value chains; (2) increased the use of climate-smart and nutrition-focused agricultural practices among women farmers and entrepreneurs; and (3) increased gender-equitable participation of women and men in decision-making within their households, communities, and the private sector.

Results achieved as of March 2025 include: (1) mobilized and registered 52,836, women smallholder farmers; (2) increased average income of women smallholder farmers from $105.30 at baseline to $258.85 for groundnut farmers, and from $70.47 to $81.44 for soybean farmers; (3) increased duration of access to fertile lands by women smallholder farmers from an average of 2.5 years to 8.3 years; (4) increased access to post-production services such as threshing for soybeans and shelling for groundnuts from a baseline of 29.54% to 97.10%; (5) increased women smallholder farmers’ access to finance from 16.23 % to 84.78%; (6) increased access to farming inputs, such as certified seeds, legume-specific fertilizers, and inoculants, from 30% to 94.87%; (7) trained 46,103 women smallholder farmers in climate-smart and environmentally sensitive agricultural practices and 35,125 women farmers in dry season vegetable farming. This led to increased adoption of recommended practices from 15% at baseline to 97%; (8) trained 36,484 women smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs on processing and using nutrient-rich and indigenous foods; (9) reduced women’s daily average hours of work from 12.03 hours to 11.05 hours and increased men’s average from 6.95 hours to 7.51 hours a day; and (10) increased women’s active participation in household decision-making in all domains from 14.9% to 50%