Ghana

 

8 03, 2025

Women in Ghana plant ‘diversion’ trees to protect shea trees and their livelihoods

2026-03-25T23:19:40-04:00Tags: |

Sonam Lama Hyolmo tells the story of the women in northern Ghana leading a community-based effort to protect shea trees. Shea trees are a cornerstone of local livelihoods, culture, and climate resilience, but the demand for charcoal and firewood is accelerating deforestation. To reduce pressure on Indigenous shea parklands, around 300 community members, 60% of them women, have planted more than 53,000 fast-growing “diversion” trees such as Gum Arabic and Paperback Thorn across roughly 158 hectares of land. These species grow quickly and can be sustainably harvested for fuel, giving families an alternative source of wood while safeguarding slower-growing shea trees that provide essential nuts for butter and other products. The initiative not only helps conserve biodiversity but also supports economic wellbeing and soil health in a changing climate. By reimagining forest management and centering women who are central to the shea value chain, this project exemplifies inclusive climate action rooted in local knowledge and equitable resource stewardship.

6 11, 2021

Elevating Women’s Voices in Climate Change Adaptation Through Visual Storytelling

2025-03-06T17:29:38-05:00Tags: , |

This educational video by the National Adaptation (NAP) Plan Global Network highlights how visual and creative communications play a key role in promoting locally-led and gender responsive climate adaptation. The NAP Global Network collaborated with the Lensational program to uplift women in Ghana and Kenya, teaching them to use photography and storytelling as a means of highlighting the impacts of climate change in their communities. Through photography workshops and exhibitions, these women were able to share their stories and perspectives on climate change adaptation, providing valuable insights that have been overlooked in traditional decision-making processes. Lensational CEO Lydia Wanjiku, who authored the curriculum on photography storytelling for climate action, describes how storytelling plays a vital role in visibility of the diverse impacts of climate change. By amplifying women's voices and experiences through creative communication, the initiative aims to promote gender-responsive and locally-led approaches to climate adaptation, ultimately leading to more effective and sustainable solutions.

20 09, 2019

Decolonizing Microfinance: An Indigenous Feminist Approach To Transform Macro-Debit Into Micro-Credit

2023-12-07T14:31:23-05:00Tags: |

In this journal article, Jacqueline Marie Quinless and Francis Adu-Febiri, two Canadian-based researchers, highlight how microfinance can be recognized as a form of gender colonization and oppression. The authors argue that both current literature on microfinance and Nancy Fraser’s theory on feminism fail to provide a pragmatic solution to guide Indigenous women out of these oppressive microfinance structures. The authors put forward that these oppressive structures are better understood and addressed through discussions with Indigenous women food producers in Ghana who are actively decolonizing and indigenizing microfinance.

30 06, 2017

WoMin Second Annual Feminist School: Strengthening The Tools Of Our Resistance

2017-10-30T03:19:49-04:00Tags: |

Under the theme, “Developing our African eco-feminist craft; strengthening the tools of our resistance,” the WoMin alliance held its second annual feminist school in Accra, Ghana in June 2017. For eight days, 46 participants from 11 African countries analyzed the economic, political and social systems that work in tandem to exploit both African women and Africa’s natural resources and the tools of resistance that are needed to craft an alternative people and nature centered vision of development. African women and feminists are not only telling their stories, they are also fighting and winning their struggles. Photo credit: WoMin

8 03, 2017

Celebrating The Contribution Of Women Farmers In Northern Ghana

2017-10-31T12:11:18-04:00Tags: |

Female farmers in Northern Ghana constitute the majority of the labor force on small farms. They are increasingly implementing agroecological farming practices, such as reversing land degradation and restoring soil fertility, to increase yields of nutritionally valuable crops impacted by climate change. Photo credit: Trax Ghana

26 10, 2016

Ghana’s Eco-Friendly Bamboo Bikes

2017-10-26T00:00:35-04:00Tags: |

Ghanaian women and young people are taking sustainable commuting to the next level by constructing custom made bicycles out of the local material bamboo, grown by local farmers. Ghana Bamboo Bikes woman CEO and founder Bernice Dapaah has met the highest standards of innovating and shaping just, sustainable, new economies. Each bike is 100% recyclable and for every bamboo plant used, another ten are planted. After training and employing 35 locals, including people with disabilities, Dapaah wants to relieve more unemployment by hiring another 50 locals while also growing the localized ecological economy she has created in her community. Photo credit: AP

28 10, 2015

Why The Need For Ghana To Have A Gender Sensitive Climate Change Policy

2017-10-28T22:48:59-04:00Tags: |

Fariya Abubakari, the county coordinator of End Ecocide Ghana, is using journalism to advocate for gender mainstreaming in international climate policy. In this article, she argues that the daily experiences of women like Kubura, a farmer from the Upper East Region of Ghana, provide ample evidence in favor of centering gender in mitigation and adaptation. Citing Kubura's role in her family as the main breadwinner and provider of food and water, Abubakari shows how gender sensitive climate policy can build on women's roles as caretakers and natural resource stewards to design effective mitigation adaptation strategies, while calling for an increase in women's voices in international climate negotiations. Photo credit: Women In Tamale Via Photopin (License)

22 05, 2015

Ghana’s Women Farmers Resist The G7 Plan To Grab Africa’s Seeds

2018-08-26T16:10:13-04:00Tags: |

Traditional farmers like Esther Boakye Yiadom and organizations like Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Rural Women’s Farmers Association of Ghana, and Global Justice Now, are actively challenging the Ghanaian government’s agreement to participate in the new G7 Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The Alliance would negatively impact the small-scale farmers who traditionally follow seed saving and seed sharing practices. These practices have allowed small farmers to maintain traditional forms of agriculture, save many varieties of seeds, and protect biodiversity. However, with this new Alliance, the seed market will be concentrated in the hands of a few multinational companies. Thus, restricting farmers from seed saving, impacting cultural practices, forcing the small-scale farmers to buy seeds from corporations, expanding land grabbing, increasing the influx of GMO seeds, and eroding rights of small-scale farmers.  The good news is that after relentless organizing, protesting, and petitions from rural women and ally organizations, the legislation has come to a halt.  Photo Credit: Global Justice Now

22 05, 2015

Ghana’s Women Farmers Resist G7 Plan To Grab Africa’s Seeds

2017-07-19T22:05:05-04:00Tags: |

Esther Baokye Yiadom and other women farmers in Ghana are resisting a proposed law that would restrict their ability to save and trade ancestral climate-resilient seeds, and empower multinational companies to manage seed access. In the face of this new law, the women of Ghana are uplifting diversity, community well-being, and centuries of tradition to enable their communities to live sustainably within a changing climate. Photo credit: Global Justice Now

1 01, 2012

West African Women And Water Training

2017-10-18T11:39:18-04:00Tags: |

Women are the primary stakeholders of water in many communities. Women from Togo, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon, amongst others, convened at the 2010 West African Women and Water Training in Ghana to learn skills to transform their communities. The trainers and participants included Monica Ayomah, rainwater harvesting specialist; Elizabeth Noah, participant; Gloria Urevbu, participant; Nadia Ali Dawud, participant; Pandora Thomas of the Global Peer USA; Amira Diamond of the Women’s Earth Alliance; Ade Odunsi, action planning trainer; and Elizabeth Kramer of the Women’s Earth Alliance. The workshop supported women to defy gender stereotypes and use technology effectively to promote water sanitation in their respective regions. Photo credit: Women’s Earth Alliance

20 11, 2010

Strengthening Policy On Gender, Economic And Climate Justice In Africa

2017-11-14T21:34:10-05:00Tags: |

Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) and Development Alternatives With Women for a New Era (DAWN) organized a regional consultation and training institute on the intersections of gender, economy and ecological justice in Accra, Ghana. As the deepening food, energy, financial and climate crisis since the 2007 global economic recession has hit African women particularly hard, this meeting analyzed the expressions of these structural distortions and the potential for African women to work for the creation of a more equitable continent. Photo credit: WECAN International

24 01, 2010

Statement On Gender, Economic And Ecological Justice By Young Africa Women Activists

2018-01-24T12:17:06-05:00Tags: |

Young African women played an important role in the “African Women’s Decade”, including through a gathering of women activist in Accra, Ghana for the Regional Consultation and Training on Gender, Economic and Environmental Justice. As part of the 5 year anniversary of the Maputo Protocol around women’s rights, the women participants issues a statement raising calls for inclusion of sexual rights, and urged the national legislations to adopt inclusive and sustainable strategies to prevent climate change. Lastly, they demanded from different governments to ensure women’s right to land and property, and end discriminatory practices and laws around land rights.

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