Adwoa Frimpomaah, a smallholder farmer from Ghana’s Bono East Region, and her two children have been eating maize likely infected by aflatoxins. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
BONO EAST REGION, Ghana , Oct 16 2019 (IPS)

Adwoa Frimpomaah, a smallholder farmer from Dandwa, a farming community in Nkoranza, in Ghana’s Bono East Region, and her two children have been consuming insect-infested and discoloured grains produced from their three-acre farm.

“Just look, I harvested this maize a week ago and after de-husking, majority of the cobs are either rotten, mouldy, or discoloured. I spent all my resources on this farm so I will sell the good grains, and wash the darkened grains, take out the rotten ones and eat it because we have no food,” she tells IPS.

Part of the yield from the April to July farming season, the grains that Frimpomaah and her family consumed are discoloured and mouldy because of the humidity and high temperatures here.

Dr. Rose Omari, Senior Research Scientist at the Science, Technology and Policy Research Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, describes these discoloured and mouldy grains as potentially being contaminated by harmful aflatoxins, which are both toxic and carcinogenic.

Researchers say that Ghana, like many West African countries, has high levels of aflatoxins in a majority of its staples, such as maize, peanuts, millet, and sorghum.

“Consumption of both maize and groundnut results in high human aflatoxin exposure in Ghana. However, most Ghanaians have little to no knowledge of either what aflatoxins are or the health risks posed by these toxins,” a 2018 report titled ‘Prevalence of Aflatoxin Contamination in Maize and Groundnut in Ghana’ states.  

“Aflatoxins are one of the most potent and dangerous groups of mycotoxins worldwide. Over four billion people in developing countries are repeatedly exposed to aflatoxins, contributing to greater than 40 percent of the disease burden in these countries,” an explanation on the characteristics of aflatoxins states. 

Smallholder farmers take a hit

This is in addition to economic losses.

“The trade sector has been affected as well. Commodities from Ghana (peanut butter, spices, and edible seeds) exceeding tolerance thresholds have been rejected in European borders. As a consequence, Ghana faces a threat of an export ban of aflatoxin-susceptible commodities if necessary actions to reduce aflatoxin levels in trade commodities are not taken,” the 2018 report titled ‘Prevalence of Aflatoxin Contamination in Maize and Groundnut in Ghana’ states. 

Other small holder farmers are also feeling the impact.

“Yesterday an aggregator came here to convince us to sell a 100-kilogram sack of maize for GHC 90 ($16). We do not get the right market because of high levels of aflatoxins that affects the quality of our grains,” smallholder farmer Regina Dabiali, 30, tells IPS.

“It is demotivating for us to work hard throughout the season and not receive our deserved wage. We are not progressing in life.”

Ghanian smallholder farmer Regina Dabiali says they are increasingly losing out on harvests as their grains are becoming affected by aflatoxins. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

People unwittingly exposed to the toxins

Gladys Serwaa Adusah, the leader of the farming cooperative, Middle Zone Women Farmers, says that aflatoxin contamination is not only robbing people of income, but also is “deadly and scary”.

“I know that some traders in their quest to maximise profit prepare and sell unwholesome corn dough by mixing aflatoxins contaminated grains with the good ones. It is used to prepare a variety of dishes, including porridge, kenkey and banku, (local dishes) which many people eat unknowingly,” she says.

Omari tells IPS that studies conducted show that the continuous intake of food that contains high levels of aflatoxins, is detrimental to the health of both adults and children. In adults, she says, studies validate that the accumulation of low levels of aflatoxins over time damages the human liver, resulting in liver cancer. It also causes acute health conditions including, vomiting, abdominal pains, coma, and death when highly contaminated products are consumed.

Omari says, “It is a fact that in sub-Saharan Africa children are exposed to aflatoxins very early in life, including in utero through maternal food intake, during breastfeeding, through weaning and post-weaning periods through foods prepared from aflatoxin-contaminated peanuts and maize.”

“This leads to malabsorption, micronutrient deficiencies, impaired immune function, and vulnerability to gut infections, which all lead to impaired growth and malnutrition.”

Omari says, according to the latest Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, stunting in Ghana is highest among children under the age of five in the Northern Region and lowest in the Greater Accra region.

Referencing a study she conducted in 2018, together with other researches, Omari reveals that over 64 percent of weanimix (food made of maize, peanuts and beans) samples tested for high levels of aflatoxins, above 10 parts per billion (ppb) codex standards for process foods.

“The prevalence levels in this country are very high. These products ideally should not be on the market because safety-wise it is not wholesome. Most especially it is food for children who are the most vulnerable, ” she says.

However, according to the Food Sustainability Index, a global study on nutrition, sustainable agriculture and food waste developed in collaboration between the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation and the Economist Intelligence Unit, Ghana has a malnourishment prevalence score of 74.2 out of 100, where 100 equals the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators.

Though quality Assurance Manager at Nestlé Ghana, Raphael Kuwornu, tells IPS that the issue of high levels of aflatoxins is of great concern to the company, “because we produce food for both adults and especially infants”.

“As a result we are working with a roadmap, which would see a continuous reduction in aflatoxin from 0.5ppb to 0.2ppb by 2020 for companies that supply us with maize grains,” he says.

Temperatures soar and so does prevelance of aflatoxins

Conditions favourable for the development, growth and dispersion of these fungi is between temperatures of 18 to 42° Celsius.

Deputy Director and Head of Research and Applied Meteorology at the Ghana Meteorological Agency, Francesca Martey, tells IPS that data gathered indicates a warming climate in Ghana.

Since 1960, she states, Ghana’s whole mean annual temperature rose by 1° Celsius and projections shows a further increase. “This is anticipated to have a major impact on the crop production system. The situation is not mild it is a serious issue,” she stresses.

Dr. Emmanuel Tachie-Obeng, a Principal Programme Officer at the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency, confirms to IPS that the rising temperature will fuel the production and spread of aflatoxins.

Tachie-Obeng says aflatoxins levels in maize may increase rapidly if not checked in areas such as Northern Volta, Central and Bono regions.

A solution that is not yet available to all

Last year, scientists at the International Institute of Tropical Agricultural (IITA) in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology developed and tested a bio-pesticide called Aflasafe that controls the fungi that produces aflatoxins in the soil. 

Aflasafe is made from four non-aflatoxin producing  types of fungi native to Ghana, preventing crop infection, contamination, and reducing aflatoxins by between 80 and 100 percent.

Dr. Daniel Agbetiameh, Aflasafe Technical Advisor at IITA, tells IPS that the all-natural product is applied before crops are harvested and it displaces the aflatoxin-producing moulds by first occupying and then “colonising” the space these poison producers would otherwise occupy.

“With four kilos of Aflasafe, we can protect an entire acre of maize, groundnuts or sorghum. The result is increased farmer income, and better consumer health,” Agbetiameh notes.

He adds that aflatoxin management is a pipeline of events that starts from the farmer to the consumer so each actor needs to play their role in reducing levels of aflatoxins.

Frimpomaah, Adusah and Dabiali want the government to consider including Aflasafe on the list of inputs offered to farmers under its flagship programme Planting for Food and Jobs.

Until then, Dabiali says that smallholder farmers like herself, are “sweating for nothing”.

About 2.58 million metric tonnes of raw plastics are imported into Ghana annually of which about 73 percent of this effectively ends up as waste. Credit: Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ACCRA, Dec 21 2018 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Naa Adjeley lives in Glefe, a waterlogged area that is one of the biggest slums along the west coast of Accra, Ghana. The sixth grade student, his parents and three siblings use 30 single-use plastic bags per day for breakfast.

When they finish eating the balls of ‘kenkey’, fried mackerel, and pepper sauce, the plastic bags that the food was individually wrapped in are dumped into the river that runs through the slum, eventually ending up in the ocean, which lies a mere 50 metres from their home.

In one month, this family alone contributes over 900 pieces of single-use plastics to the five trillion pieces of microplastic in the ocean. This is because their community of over 1,500 households, which sits on a wetlands, does not have a waste disposal system.

So assuming that their neighbours also dump their waste into the river and that they consume similar amounts of plastics per day, this means they add over 1.3 million pieces of single-use plastics to the sea each month.

The situation is the same in all the other settlements that are close to degraded lagoons around the ocean.

To date, Accra has some 265 informal settlementss, including Chorkor, James town, Osu, Labadi, Teshie, Korlegonor, Opetequaye, Agege and Old Fadama.

With all of these being in different stages of development, according to a recent study by the People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements (PD) Ghana, a non-governmental organisation. Professor Alfred Oteng-Yeboah, Chair of the Ghana National Biodiversity Committee, recalls that 10 years ago food was packaged with leaves and women went to the market with woven baskets or cotton bags.

“Now because of civilisation, every food item or prepared food bought in this country is first wrapped in a single-use plastic and then is kept in plastic carrier bags. If Accra has a population of over 2.6 million and everyone uses a single plastic every day, just calculate how much plastic waste is generated per day,” he told IPS.

About 2.58 million metric tonnes of raw plastics are imported into Ghana annually, of which 73 percent effectively ends up as waste, while only 19 percent is re-used, according to the country’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Sadly, less than 0.1 percent of the waste is recycled, meaning all the plastic waste generated ends up in the environment.

John Pwamang, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, is worried about the discharge of plastics into the various lagoons, and ultimately in the sea. “The reckless manner in which we throw away waste has become the most insidious threat to the ocean today,” he told IPS.

“We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are fast reaching the point where there will literally be more plastics in the sea than fish. Our fishermen will agree with me as they already are experiencing it. They always have more plastics than fish in their trawls. I am inclined to believe that the situation in Ghana may be more dire than it would appear,” he said.

Dr Kofi Okyere, a Senior Lecturer at the Cape Coast University, says lagoons are home to diverse species. There are 90 lagoons and 10 estuaries with their associated marshes and mangrove swamps along Ghana’s 550-km coastline stretch.

“Although I cannot put precise statistical figures, most of the lagoons, especially those located in urban areas, have been heavily polluted within the last decade or two. The pollutants are largely domestic and industrial effluent discharge, sewage, plastics, aerosol cans and other solid wastes, and heavy metal contaminants (lead, mercury, arsenic, etc.) from industrial activities,” he told IPS.

Nelson Boateng, Chief Executive Director of Nelplast Ghana Limited, is one of a group of people and companies that are finding alternative uses for plastic waste. He is holding a paving brick made from recycled plastic. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

However, while a large number of Ghanaians are still using plastic, and discarding it, there are a few people and organisations that are putting the plastic to better use.

Nelson Boateng, Chief Executive Director of Nelplast Ghana limited, began moulding and creating pavement blocks from plastic in 2015.

The company uses 70 percent sand and 30 percent plastic to manufacture the pavement blocks, but the ratio of the two materials changes depending on the kind of pavement project.

Walking IPS through the process in an interview, he explains the plastic waste is mixed with sand and taken through a melting process, and then the pavement slab is ready.

“So far we have paved many important areas, including residential areas, the premises of the Action Chapel, the frontage of Ghana’s Ministry of Environment Science, Technology and Innovation and some walkways in the country.”

“The advantage of plastic pavement blocks compared to the conventional cement blocks is that it is 30 percent cheaper, it does not break, there is no green algae growth, it does not fade. A square metre of our plastic paves cost GHC 33 (6.9 dollars) while the concrete cost 98 (20.20 dollars) I am doing this because I love the environment and I did all this on my own to beat plastic,” he said.

Currently, Boateng is recycling 2,000 kilos of plastic waste, but his factory, which is situated on a one-acre piece of land at the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly, has the capacity to produce 200,000 plastic pavement blocks.

Of the over 500 waste pickers who sell plastics to Boateng, 60 percent are women who depend on this as their livelihood. With the price of a kilo being 10 US cents women make a minimum of 10.40 dollars per sale.

Ashietey Okaiko, 34, a single mother and plastic picker of Nelplast Ghana limited, confirmed to IPS that she earns 31 dollars on average per sale, and that is what she uses to take care of her family.

“Because people now know that plastic waste is valuable, many women who are now employed are picking plastics. The company needs support to be able to buy more because sometimes when we send it they do not buy,” she says.

Boateng stated that pickers could collect up to the tune of 10,000 kilograms a day, saying, “I feel bad telling them I cannot pay due to financial constraints.”

Similar to Boateng’s innovation is the efforts of the Ghana Recycling Initiative by Private Enterprises (GRIPE), an industry-led coalition under the auspices of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), a non-governmental organisation, that is manufacturing modified building blocks out of plastic.

The initiative, carried out in conjunction with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, is pending certification by the Ghana Standard Authority for commercial use.

Ama Amoah, Regional Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Manager at Nestle, a leading member of GRIPE, told IPS that the group has done community and schools education and awareness campaigns on proper waste management practices for plastics.

There are also other innovators such as Seth Quansah, who runs Alchemy Alternative Energy, which is converting plastic waste and tires through internationally approved and environmentally sound processes into hydrocarbon energy, mainly diesel-grade fuels.

Through the Ghana Climate Innovations Centre, and Denmark and the Netherlands through the World Bank, Quansah has received mentorship and is preparing to expand the company.

Ghana’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Ken Ofori Atta, says the Ministry of Environment, Science Technology and Innovation (MESTI) is in the process of finalising a new National Plastic Waste Policy, which will focus on strategies to promote reduction, reuse, and recycling.

But Helen La Trobe, an environmental volunteer in Ghana, tells IPS, “African industry should seek innovative approaches to reduce plastic use and plastic waste in all its forms by replacing plastic with other innovative products and reducing, reusing and recycling where replacing is not currently possible.”

She also wants the government to provide adequate public rubbish bins at trotro stops (bus stops) and markets to have these frequently emptied.

She says plastic is indestructible and breaks into smaller and smaller parts, called microplastics, but it takes more than 500 years to completely disappear. 

According to Trobe, microplastics and microbeads, tiny polyethylene plastic added to health and beauty products such as some skin cleansers and toothpaste, absorb toxins and industrial chemicals from the environment. As fish and other marine life ingest tiny pieces of plastic, the toxins and chemicals enter their tissue and then the food chain, which ultimately affect humans.  

While Boateng does not believe that production of plastic is a problem, but that authorities need to support innovators and there is a need for a behavioural change, he adds, “The more the support, the cleaner the environment. If we are serious of ridding the country and the sea of plastics this is the way forward. When people go to the beach to clean up, the waste ends ups in the land field site, which is still in the environment.”

A fish catch has come in. Since the community from the Sanwoma fishing village have begun restoring the mangroves, the lagoon has seen a marginal increase in fish stock. However, the stock in the ocean remains depleted. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IP

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ACCRA, Dec 20 2018 (IPS)

It was just three and a half years ago that the Sanwoma fishing village, which sits between the sea and the mouth of the Ankobra River on the west coast of Ghana, experienced perpetual flooding that resulted in a loss of property and life.

This was because the local mangrove forests that play a key role in combating the effects of coastal erosion and rising sea levels had been wantonly and indiscriminately harvested. “Of a total 118-hectares mangrove, we had depleted 115 hectares,” Paul Nato Codjoe, a fisherman and a resident of the community explains.

The fisherfolk here depended heavily on the Ankobra wetland mangroves for cheap and available sources of fuel for fish processing. Wood from the mangroves was also used as material for construction, and sold to generate income.

But a video shown by officials of Hen Mpoano (HM), a local non-governmental organisation, helped the community understand the direct impact of their indiscriminate felling.

And it spurred the fishfolk into action. Led by Odikro Nkrumah, Chief of the Sanwoma, the community commenced a mangrove restoration plan, planting about 45,000 seeds over the last three years.

Rosemary Ackah, 38, one of the women leaders in the community, tells IPS that the vulnerability to the high tides and the resultant impact was one of the reasons for actively participating in the re-planting.

HM, with support from the United States Agency for International Development-Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP),provided periodic community education about the direct and indirect benefits of the mangrove forests.

In Ghana, there are about 90 lagoons and 10 estuaries with their associated marshes and mangrove swamps along the 550-km coastline stretch.

Dr Isaac Okyere, a lecturer at the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, University of Cape Coast, explains to IPS in an interview that the conservation of mangrove forests is essential for countries like Ghana, where the marine fishery is near collapse, with landings of important fish species at 14 percent of the record high of 140,000 metric tons 20 years ago.

The fisheries sector in Ghana supports the livelihoods of 2.2 million people — about 10 percent of the population.

Carl Fiati, Director of Natural Resource at the Environmental Protection Agency speaking in an interview with IPS, explains: “Ghana is in a precarious situation where many of the stocks are near collapse and species like the sardine and jack mackerel cannot be found again if we do not take steps to conserve, restock and protect them. A visit to the market shows that sardines, for instance, are no more.”

The Sanwoma community is not unique in the degradation of their mangroves. According to Okyere, the Butuah and Essei lagoons of Sekondi-Takoradi, the Fosu lagoon of Cape Coast, the Korle and Sakumo lagoons of Accra and the Chemu lagoon of Tema are typical examples of degraded major lagoons in the country.

“Most of the lagoons, especially those located in urban areas, have been heavily polluted within the last decade or two.” Domestic and industrial effluent discharge, sewage, plastics, and other solid waste and heavy metal contaminants (lead, mercury, arsenic, etc.) from industrial activities are blamed for this.

Rosemary Ackah is part of the women’s group that was assigned to collect seedlings used to grown a nursery of mangrove trees. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

According to Ackah, many of the women in the community also became involved in the mangrove regeneration because of the positive resultant effect of clean air that would reduce airborne diseases in the community.

“As women, we take care of our husbands and children when they are ill so we thought we should seize this opportunity to engage in this as health insurance for our families,” she added.

Ackah says the women’s group was assigned to collect seedlings used to grown a nursery. They also watered the seedlings.

“We also played a significant role during transplanting. When our husbands dig the ground we put in the seedlings and cover the side with sand. It is a joy to be part of such a great replanting project, that will help provide more fuelwood for our domestic use,” Ackah told IPS.

Codjoe says that thanks to the technical assistance from the project, the community developed an action plan for restoration and is also enforcing local laws to prevent excessive mangrove harvesting.

The community has taken control of its future, and particularly its natural resources, and has established the Ankobra Mangrove Restoration Committee to guide and oversee how the mangrove is used and maintained.

To ensure that the re-planting is sustainable, Codjoe explains that the community has, in agreement, instituted a by-law that all trees within 50 meters of the river must not be harvested. Anyone doing so will have to replant them.

It is uncertain if indiscriminate felling of the mangroves continues to happen as many in the community acknowledge the positive results of the re-planting.

“We have seen positive signs because of the re-generation, the flooding has been drastically reduced,” says Ackah.

She has witnessed another direct improvement: the high volume and large size of the shrimp, one of the delicacies in Ghana, that they local community harvests. “This has really boosted our local business and improved our diet,” she says.

Codjoe says the fish stock in the river increased and agreed that a high volume of shrimp was harvested.

Ackah adds that the project donors SFMP and local implementer HM also helped them reduce dependence on the mangroves for their livelihoods and created a resilience plan in the form of a Village Savings and Loan Scheme.

The scheme, she explains, has financially empowered members to address social and economic challenges they face, thus reducing dependence on fisheries and mangroves in terms of the need for income.

In West Africa, the economic value of nature’s contributions to people per km2 per year is valued at 4,500 dollars for mangrove coastal protection services, 40,000 dollars for water purification services, and 2,800 dollars for coastal carbon sequestration services.

This is according to an Assessment Report on the state of biodiversity in Africa, and on global land degradation and restoration, conducted under the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Fiati says that Ghana’s new draft Coastal and Marine Habitat Regulation policy, which encapsulates the protection, management and sustainable use of mangroves, will be ready and sent to the Attorney General’s Department this month to be signed into law.

And the local fisherfolk of Sanwoma are assisting in sharing their experiences and knowledge.

In the meantime, the Sanwoma are ensuring that the importance of the preservation of their mangrove forests is passed down to young people.

“Because of a lack of knowledge about the importance of such a rich resource we were destroying it. And it was at a fast rate. Now I know we have a treasure. As a leader, I will use it to sustainably and protect it for the next generation. Also, I will make sure I educate children about such a resource so they will keep it safe,” Nkrumah told IPS.

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana that have not been restored. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
GARU and TEMPANE, Ghana, Aug 20 2018 (IPS)

In the scorching Upper East Region of Ghana, the dry seasons are long and for kilometres around there is nothing but barren, dry earth. Here, in some areas, it is not uncommon for half the female population to migrate to the country’s south in search of work, often taking their young children with them.

“We realised that the long dry spell, bare land and high temperature of 40 degrees and the absence of irrigation facilities for farmers to [allow them] to farm year-round…effectively made them unemployed for the seven-month dry season,” Ayaaba Atumoce, chief of the Akaratshie community from the Garu and Tempane districts, tells IPS.“But for this initiative, our younger and future generation may have never known the beauty and importance of such indigenous trees as they [would have] all been destroyed." Talaata Aburgi, a farmer from the Garu and Tempane districts in Ghana.

The Garu and Tempane districts, which encompass 1,230 square kilometres or 123,000 hectares, had large portions of barren and degraded land until just three years ago. Now, there are pockets of lush grass, neem trees, berries and indigenous fruit growing on some 250 hectares of restored land. The dry earth is beginning to flourish, albeit it slowly.

Atumoce remembers that growing up in the area, there was dense forest cover. But it gradually diminished over time as the mostly farming communities here supplemented their income by making charcoal and selling it at regional centres. According to the 2015 Ghana Poverty Mapping report, the rate of poverty in these two districts is 54.5 percent or 70,087 people—accounting for the highest number of impoverished people in the entire region.

The rate at which trees were cut down surpassed the rate at which new trees grew, if they did at all. And soon there were less and less trees for people to make charcoal with. Sprouts were soon unable to grow also as the land became hard and lacked nutrients.

And rainfall patterns changed.

“Previously, we would prepare our farmlands in early February and start planting when the rains begin in late March or early April and ended in late September or mid-October. Now, our planting is pushed to the end of June or early July and ends just around the same period it used to. We are getting low yields,” Atumoce says.

Carl Kojo Fiati, director of Natural Resources at Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, tells IPS that deforestation and indiscriminate bush burning in the Upper Region has reduced the natural water cycles band, a natural cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, and resulted in the reduced rainfall pattern and unproductive land.

“When the shrubs are allowed to grow it draws water from the ground that evaporates into the atmosphere and becomes moisture. This moisture adds to other forms of evaporation and this is condensed and comes down as rain,” he explains.

Women and children affected

The reduced rainfall affected this community significantly. According to the Garu and Tempane districts Annual Report, 2014, large portions of the population migrated south in search of jobs from November 2013 to April 2014. According to the report, 53 percent of women in the Kpikpira and Worinyanga area councils migrated with their children to the southern part of Ghana to engage in menial jobs, exposing their children to various forms of abuse, and depriving them of basic needs such as shelter, education, health care and protection.

But three years ago, World Vision International (WVI) Ghana began implementing the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) programme. FMNR is a low-cost land restoration technique.

“After watching the video [presented by WVI] we got to know and accepted that we are suffering all these consequences because we harvested trees for timber, firewood, and constantly cleared our farmlands, engaged in indiscriminate burning and cutting,” Atumoce says.

But by this time, farmers in Garu and Tempane already knew that their crops like maize, millet, groundnuts, onions and watermelon would not grow without the use of chemical fertilisers, Atumoce explains.

“For the past 20 years, our parcels of land have not been fertile because one cannot plant without applying fertiliser. There was a long spell of drought; I observed that because the rainy season was delayed and the period of rain has now shortened. It decreased our crop yield and left us poor,” Atumoce says.

Asher Nkegbe, the United Nation Convention to Combating Desertification and Drought focal person for Ghana, explains to IPS that Ghana has adopted Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and set nationally determined contributions (NDCs). NDCs are commitments by government to tackle climate change by 2030. As part of Ghana’s NDCs, the country has committed to reforesting 20,000ha of degraded lands each year.

This includes identifying highly-degraded areas, establishing a baseline and increasing the vegetation cover. The Garu and Tempani districts are considered LDN key areas.

Ghana’s natural resources are disappearing at an alarming rate. More than 50 percent of the original forest area has been converted to agricultural land by slash and burn clearing practices. Wildlife populations are in serious decline, with many species facing extinction, according to a World Bank report.

The Garu and Tempane districts were the second and third areas in which the project was implemented, run in conjunction with the ministry of food and agriculture, the Ghana National Fire Service and other government agencies. From 2009 to 2012 the pilot was conducted in Talensi, Nabdam District, which is also here in Upper East Region.

The projects have been handed over to the communities and another one is now being introduced in Bawku East District, also in Upper East Region.

Farmers undertaking periodic pruning at vegetation Susudi, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

Simple restoration methods

The restoration in Garu and Tempane began using simple principles. This community of mostly farmers selected a degraded area and were asked to not destroy the shrubs there but to protect and allow them to grow.

They were also taught by the ministry of food and agriculture how to periodically prune away weak stems, allowing the shoots to grow into full sized trees rapidly. They were also advised to allow animals to graze on the vegetation so that their droppings could become a source for manure.

“The critical science behind regeneration and improved soil nutrient are that the leaves of the shrubs or vegetation drops and decay. The decayed leaves constitute carbon in the soil and that promotes plant growth,” says Fiati.

So far, 23 communities in Garu and Tempane have adopted the approach, and 460 people were trained by the ministry of food and agriculture. Volunteers were also trained in fire fighting techniques by the Ghana Fire Service. Community volunteer brigades were then formed, and these play an active role in quashing bushfires threatening the land.

New bylaws to regulate the harvesting of surplus wood, grasses, and other resources were also passed and enforced to prevent the indiscriminate felling of trees.

The Garu, Tempane and Talensi districts are estimated to now have over 868,580 trees, with an average density of about 4,343 trees per hectare, compared to a baseline of around 10 trees per hectare.

“We gave the farmers animals to keep as a source of an alternative livelihood so that farmers do not go back to the charcoal burning,” Maxwell Amedi, Food Security and Resilient Technical officer of WVI Ghana tells IPS.

A significant number of people, including mothers and their children, now remain in the area thanks to this alternative source of livelihood.

Amedi notes that forests are essential to realising the world’s shared vision for its people, and the planet. Forests, he says, are central to future prosperity as well as the stability of the global climate.

Talaata Aburgi, 60, from Susudi community in the Garu and Tempane districts, tells IPS that neem trees have always been used here to cure ailments including diabetes, skin ulcers, birth controls, malaria fever and stomach ache. She is glad that these trees are now repopulating the area.

In addition, red and yellow berries and other indigenous fruit have started growing again. Birds, butterflies and wild animals, like monkeys and rabbits, have reappeared. As IPS travelled through the region and visited Aburgi’s farm, we saw a significant number of farmers adopting FMNR.

The FMNR project, Fiati says, is an excellent method of correcting the problem of reduced rainfall by bringing the production cycle in sync with nature.

Nkegbe is optimistic.

“With lessons learned and the results observed with regeneration initiatives, there is hope. We are scaling it up and have even expanded it to include traditional healers and have set up 14 herbaria. It may not be 100 percent but for sure there are positive signs. More support is needed,” Nkegbe says.

Meanwhile, Aburgi says that adopting the initiative has contributed to young herders spending less time seeking grazing land and allows them to attend school for longer periods.

“But for this initiative, our younger and future generation may have never known the beauty and importance of such indigenous trees as they [would have] all been destroyed,” Aburgi says.

40-year-old Alima Asigri stands by a shea tree with logs ready to be transported for processing into charcoal. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Ghana, Jul 10 2014 (IPS)

The shea tree, a traditional African food plant, represents a major source of income for women in Ghana’s Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions, but they are helping to destroy the very resource that gives them money by cutting it down to produce charcoal.

An estimated 900,000 rural women are involved in the shea sector in northern Ghana, mostly collecting the tree’s fruit to transform it into butter. Shea butter production contributes about 18 million dollars annually to the country’s economy.

One such woman is 40-year-old Alima Asigri from Bagrugu, a community in the Karaka district of the northern region of Ghana, who, together with her four children, is fully engaged in the harvesting of shea fruit which she turns into butter for eating and cooking because it is rich in vitamins A, E and F. The butter is also used as a body cream.

On average, the family produces more than 20 kg of butter every two weeks during the peak season from April to August, earning 1,100 cedi (394 dollars) which go towards the family’s upkeep and the children’s educational needs.“Sometimes I think about how fast the resource [shea] is depleting but I have no income-generating venture other than that. It’s my livelihood, especially during the off-farming season” – Alima Asigri

Today, the shea tree is increasingly being used for its wood and not its fruit. “We also cut shea trees and process its wood into charcoal. The charcoal business is booming because of buyer demand for charcoal from shea trees rather than ordinary trees. They believe it is robust, lasts longer and is cheaper than liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),” Asigri explained.

A United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) report on ‘Woodfuel Use in Ghana: An Outlook for the Future’, indicated that about 69 percent of all urban households in Ghana use charcoal for cooking and heating, and the annual per capita consumption is around 180 kg.

According to the report, total annual consumption is about 700,000 tonnes, 30 percent of which is consumed in the country’s capital Accra. Fuel wood accounts for about 71 percent of total primary energy supply and about 60 percent of final energy demand. An estimated 2.2 million families depend on charcoal for household chores and some 600,000 small-scale enterprises depend on fuel wood or charcoal as their main sources of energy.

However, this is taking its toll on the country’s trees. In an interview with IPS, Iddi Zakaria, Coordinator of Shea Network Ghana (SNG) recalled that some 40 years ago in the Salaga district of the Northern Region, shea trees covered the entire area but now, due to constant usage and no conscious attempt  to replant, the natural resource has been depleted.

“It used to be a taboo to cut shea and other economic trees. One needed to seek permission from the chief’s palace before, but it’s different now”, he said.

He noted that a recent study by the Savanna Alliance research company had revealed that Act 571, which established the Forestry Commission of Ghana as a corporate body and mandated the commission to protect and regulate the utilisation of forest and timber resources, failed to include shea, dawadawa and baobab trees.

“The policy and institutional shortfall in the management and conservation of the sector has led to continued harvesting of shea trees indiscriminately for fuel wood and charcoal,” Zakaria told IPS, adding that even though laudable efforts are being made by stakeholders to reap the benefits from the shea sector, the future sustainability of the raw material is questionable.

“What players are asking of government are legal reforms to protect resources,” he said.

Ebenezer Djaney Djagletey, Northern Regional Director of the Forestry Commission confirmed that shea trees are not among the protected tree species listed in the forestry regulations.

Djagletey said that he was concerned about the depletion of resources due to activities such as infrastructure development, sand weaning, bush burning and farming, all of which involve the clearing of vegetation.

“Some 80 out of 100 sacks of charcoal produced are from the shea tree, the other 20 come from the neem tree and the dawadawa tree, the fruit of which is used as a cooking spice”, he said.

To discourage people from using charcoal and other fuel wood, the Ghanaian government has announced plans to distribute 50,000 six-kilogramme gas cylinders and cooking stoves to some rural areas under its Rural Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Promotion programme. According to

Ghana’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum Armah Kofi Buah, 1,500 cylinders have already been delivered.

However, Collins Kyei Boafoh, an outreach specialist with ACDI/VOCA (Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance) described the government policy as a “bad” policy and expressed scepticism about the initiative because of periodic increases in the price of LPG.

“The question is who refills the gas cylinder when it is finished. It cost about 10 cedi (3.59 dollars) to buy gas and relatively few rural folk have enough money and will opt for charcoal or fuel wood instead of gas,” he said.

He advises the government and development partners to support women with alternative livelihood skills, such as soap-making, and build more shea processing centres with guaranteed prices for shea butter to reduce the charcoal business.

Alima Asigri in Bagrugu could be one of the women to benefit if such support were to materialise and she is already aware of the harm her activity is causing to the environment.

“Sometimes I think about how fast the resource is depleting but I have no income-generating venture other than that. It’s my livelihood, especially during the off-farming season,” she told IPS. “Besides, thanks to the shea business, I have been able to educate my first son through university education and he’s now doing his further studies in Belgium.”

Community-based volunteer Zainab Abubakar (r) administers the first dose of amodiaqune to one-year-old Inusa as he sits on his mother, Ayishetu Hamdellah. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ZANDUA, Ghana, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

Zainab Abubakar saves children’s lives. A few years ago she was just an ordinary woman with no medical training living in rural Kpilo in Ghana’s Northern Region. 

Here the nearest medical clinic is a 12-km walk away and serves the 20 to 40 communities within this electoral area. Across Northern Region, less than 10 percent of communities have a local clinic. However, in the region’s capital, Tamale, 19.4 percent of communities have local clinics.

Now, instead of making the long journey to a crowded health centre, mothers bring their sick children to Abubakar. When she sees children with symptoms of sweating, weakness and a high temperature she’s able to differentiate between a case of pneumonia and malaria. She’s also able to correctly treat and provide medication for these illnesses. “Since these CBVs started working in this community the health of children here has improved. We no longer record deaths.” -- chief of Kpilo, Mahama Abdullah

“In a situation like that I bathe the child and then I dissolve one tablet of amodiaquine in a small clean cup and give it to the child to drink,” Abubakar tells IPS.

She then provides the mother with medication. “In order that the medication is administered at the right time, I do a follow-up to ensure that the child is given the drug,” she adds.

Abubakar is one of 16,500 community-based volunteers (CBVs) trained by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to manage common childhood diseases in their communities which lack access to healthcare facilities. GHS also supplies them with medication to treat these illnesses. While medication is free, most people pay about 20 cents as a token payment for the drug administered.

This rural health initiative, called the Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM), is supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

Since 2007, volunteers from the four provinces here that have limited healthcare facilities — Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Central Regions — have been trained to reduce the high rate of child mortality. Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria account for two out of five child mortality cases.

Alhassan Abukari, ICCM assistant project coordinator in GHS’s Northern Regional Health Directorate, says they are unable to provide medical care to most communities due to lack of resources and personnel.

In Ghana’s Northern Region it was harder to provide services, Abukari says, because communities are hard to reach and usually are cut off because of flooding during the rainy season.

“A sizeable number of people in peri-urban communities of the region do not have access to health facilities so these volunteers are really bridging the very wide gap that existed,” he tells IPS.

“We seriously lack personnel; for instance in the case of a community in Saboba district in the Northern Region of Ghana, there is only one community health nurse taking care of 20 communities and she is supposed to visit these communities,” he says. 

The CBVs promote health literacy and behaviour during house-to-house visits. During the visits Abubakar explains the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, sleeping under a mosquito net, and washing one’s hands with soap. She refers all severe or complicated cases to the nearest health facility.

Abubakar and the other volunteers are not paid for their work. But, she says, she feels happy saving lives. She says she is motivated by the fact that every child belongs to the community and it’s her passion to serve the community.

According to UNICEF, community management of childhood pneumonia could result in a 70 percent reduction in under-five mortality.

ICCM believes that malaria can also be reduced through the initiative. It is estimated that malaria-specific under-five mortality can be brought down by 40 to 60 percent, and severe malaria morbidity by 53 percent.

Abukari says that the timely intervention of these volunteers, who serve as “doctors” in their various communities, has helped prevent cases of child deaths.

Ayishetu Hamdellah, a widow and mother of four, from Kpilo says having Abubakar around is a huge assistance. It means she no longer has to walk long distances to get treatment for her one-year-old son, Inusa, who used to contract malaria frequently.

Now, Inusa is able to receive immediate treatment if he gets malaria.

The chief of Kpilo, Mahama Abdullah, tells IPS that initiative is so successful he would like it extended to include treatment for adults as well.

“Since these CBVs started working in this community the health of children here has improved.

“We no longer record deaths.”

Dunwaa Soayare, 45, shows her savings book that tracks her weekly contributions to the Asong-taaba Women’s Group, a cooperative in Denugu, Upper East Region, northern Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
DENUGU, Ghana, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

Dunwaa Soayare, 45, a smallholder farmer, widow and mother of five had the sort of economic profile that meant she was denied access to credit from Ghana’s mainstream banking institutions.

She had no collateral, no bank account and found it impossible to provide three meals a day for her children, let alone ensure that they stayed in school.

But after joining the Asong-taaba Women’s Group, a cooperative in Denugu, Upper East Region, northern Ghana, her life has changed dramatically. Not only has she been able to provide for her family by moving them from their mud hut into the brick house she built, she’s also been able to provide tertiary education for children and has seen two of them qualify as teachers.  “This is a small project with a big impact…even though we are poor we can save." -- Solomon Atinga, programme manager of the Presbyterian Agricultural Station at Garu Tempane

“Aside from taking care of my children’s education I have expanded my farming from half a hectare to two hectares. I now cultivate one hectare of maize, half a hectare of millet as well as half a hectare of groundnut,” she told IPS.

Soayare explained that from one hectare of land she harvests 15  bags of 84 kilograms each, which she sells for 70,000 Ghana Cedis (380 dollars) – a huge sum.

The group, which started in 2008, raised 5,000 dollars at the end of 2013 from the weekly contribution of its 25 members – almost all smallholder farmers and the breadwinners in their families.

Every Monday, the women meet under a shea tree and pay their contributions of between 50 cents to five dollars. They are allowed to apply for a loan, which many use to fund alternative businesses if their crops fail.

For Soayare it’s meant that she and her family are no longer vulnerable during the lean season. In Upper East Region the rainy season usually starts in May and ends in October. However, changes in the weather pattern now mean that the rains fall much later.

So when the rains don’t come, instead of suffering through a crop failure, Soayare borrows money from the group and makes soap and buys vegetables for resale.

“I don’t know what I would have done without this savings initiative,” Soayare said.

But Asong-taaba is one of 500 groups in the district that involve almost 12,000 people, mostly women, scattered across the Garu Tempane district in Upper East Region. These cooperatives were started under a Care International project called Enhanced Savings and Credit Association for Poverty Eradication.

Soayare and these thousands of women are living better lives thanks to the savings cooperatives.

A Ghana Statistics Services 2011 survey shows that 31 percent of households in Ghana are headed by women. Regional director of the National Population Council, Zangbalum-Bomahe Amadu, said that due to polygamous practices in northern Ghana some men refuse to take care of their children, often leaving the burden to the women.

“The situation becomes bad if the man dies…most women, who are mostly illiterate in the rural areas strive to take care of almost all the needs of their children,” he told IPS.

Musah Abubakari, deputy coordinating director of Garu Tempane district, told IPS that the cooperatives have helped reduce poverty among many families in the area.

“Most of them are engaged in different forms of economic activities. Many of them are concerned about the education of their children, so school enrolment has also increased in the last three years,” he said.

Collins Kyei Boafoh, an outreach specialist at the Agricultural Cooperative Development International/Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA), told IPS that the village savings and loans concept played a critical role in the livelihoods of women and was also a climate change adaptation measure.

“It is an open secret that for the past five years the savannah belt of Ghana, consisting of Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions, continue to experience low rains and long drought periods. This is not supportive of farming, which employs about 80 percent of people in the region,” he explained.

Boafoh said the women’s cooperatives are now using their funds to venture into other activities like petty trading to supplement their incomes.

“After the short farming periods, the women gather their monies in the form of community savings and offer themselves petty loans for trading, aggregation and processing. This gives them a sustained income and job security,” he said.

Boafoh suggested that the initiative must be adopted, modernised and expanded by the government as a poverty-reduction initiative in the four poorest regions in the country namely Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Central Regions.

Solomon Atinga is programme manager of the Presbyterian Agricultural Station at Garu Tempane – another Care International cooperative.

He said the initiative, which extends to about 100 communities in the district, has had a positive impact on the lives of women here. They are able to take care of their children and support their extended family members.

“In fact the living standard of the women and their families has improved tremendously,” he added.

“This is a small project with a big impact…even though we are poor, we can save. The least amount a group usually raises at the end of the year is 2,000 dollars,” he said.

Model of Hope activist Sulemana Sulley lives positively with HIV and teaches others how to do it. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Feb 19 2014 (IPS)

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Zainab Salifu queued at the fevers unit of the Tamale Teaching Hospital in northern Ghana. Earlier in the day, the 18-year-old had been diagnosed HIV positive.

Despite the kind counselling offered by senior nurse Felicity Bampo, Salifu felt her world was crumbling. She wanted to die.

As Salifu told IPS, she began sobbing hysterically and dropped to the floor. People gawked at her. Then a middle-aged man approached her, took her hand and led her to a quiet corner.

“This is not the time for weeping,” he told Salifu. “Accept your condition. HIV is not a death warrant. Concentrate on taking your ARVs, eat well and exercise.”

“You are not alone, anyone can get the virus. Look at me,” he added.

Sulley works for Model of Hope, a volunteer group set up by Catholic Relief Services. Its 19 members in Tamale were trained as community counsellors by the Ghana AIDS Commission.

With a population of 540,000, bustling Tamale, 600 kms north of Accra, the capital, is the country’s fourth-largest city and hub of the northern region.

Every Tuesday and Friday, designated days at Tamale Hospital for HIV testing and ARV collection, volunteers are at hand to help people deal with a fresh diagnosis and check how patients on treatment are coping.

Bampo tests and counsels an average of six to 10 young people daily, most through doctors’ referrals. Few come by their own choice, she told IPS.

“Voluntary testing is not popular among young people because they fear being stigmatised”, she said.

Among sexually active youth aged 15-24, just four out of 10 women and only two out of 10 men have ever been tested, according to the 2011 Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).

“Most people are aware of HIV and some of its symptoms but few know that ARVs will boost their immune system so they can live long,” said Bampo.

Low prevalence, high stigma

Ghana has a relatively low HIV prevalence of 1.4 percent, down from 2.3 percent in 2001.

Low prevalence brings its own problems: lack of familiarity with managing the disease, high levels of stigma and low levels of tolerance.

Just six percent of women and 15 percent of men aged 15 and above accept people living with HIV, according to the MICS.

Salifu, a final year trainee at a vocational school, told IPS that she was infected by her one and only boyfriend. She broke up with him but has not yet mustered the courage to tell him or her family about testing HIV positive in December 2013.

Like Salifu, seven out of 10 women would hide that a family member is infected with the AIDS virus.

Sulley blames the widespread perception that the virus brings immediate death and that one can contract HIV by associating with infected persons.

“We have stopped all our free testing events because the test kits have been directed to pregnant women.” -- Nuhu Musah, coordinator of the HIV and AIDS Support Unit
In 2013, Sulley counselled about 200 young people newly diagnosed, most of them students. Many had suicidal thoughts, and Sulley and his colleagues work hard to teach them to live positively and happily.

Sulley told IPS that several teenagers have committed suicide in recent years after learning they were HIV positive.

Nuhu Musah, coordinator of the HIV and AIDS Support Unit in Ghana’s northern region, regrets that the youth-oriented Know Your Status Campaign has been halted for lack of test kits.

“We have stopped all our free testing events because the test kits have been directed to pregnant women,” he told IPS.

The campaign held monthly outreach programmes in communities and at national events, like Independence Day, to encourage testing.

According to Musah, the northern region has four youth-friendly centres for HIV testing and sexual health but for lack of resources they are not working.

This will not improve the dismal figures of HIV testing and knowledge among young people.

Nationwide, only four out of 10 young men and women aged 15-24 have comprehensive knowledge about AIDS, the MICS found.

Northern Ghana has the lowest comprehensive knowledge for men and women, 17 percent, compared to 47 percent in Greater Accra.

MICS data show that Ghana is falling short of its target of having 95 percent of youth aged 15-24 fully informed about HIV by 2015.

“Comprehensive knowledge of HIV prevention and transmission is still low in Ghana, despite the many years of public sensitisation,” concluded the survey. “Concerted efforts should be directed at young people as many continue to get infected due to low levels of comprehensive HIV knowledge.”

A confined field trial of genetically modified cowpeas in Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
SAVELUGU, Ghana, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

A battle over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is building in Ghana after the government recently completed regulations that could allow modified cowpeas and other selected crops to be grown following confined field trials (CFT).

Civil society groups and at least one opposition party have positioned themselves to fight against the introduction of GMOs."The state should support sustainable farming by providing the necessary resources, infrastructure and enough technical personnel." -- Dr. Wilson Dogbe

The BT Cowpea is among three other crops – cotton, rice and sweet potatoes – which have been cleared for confined trials and evaluation. Scientists will seek to create a cowpea variety resistant to the pod borer or maruca, a species of moth that targets bean crops.

The choice of cowpeas, known elsewhere as blackeyed peas, is important because the legume plays a vital role in the nutritional needs of Ghanaians, especially those in the Northern Region. Rural families make use of the entire plant, from its leaf to the dry grain.

Ibrahim Amando, 35, a subsistence farmer at Pong-Tamale in the Savelugu district of the Northern Region of Ghana, told IPS his household depends on the crop because of its robust nature and nutritional value. He has become one of roughly 200 million people on the African continent, particularly in dry savanna areas, who cultivate and rely on the crop.

Amando complained that he spends 60 dollars to buy insecticide to spray his two-acre cowpea farm the necessary 10 times before harvest. Cymetox Super and Sumitex, the pest control products he uses, each cost six dollars for a litre.

“I spray the farm every week to reduce pests and insects, especially the maruca, and I harvest four 84-kilogramme sacks during a good season,” he said.

Ghana’s production of cowpeas, the second most important legume after groundnut, stands to increase by about 50 percent if the CFTs are successful. Crop losses could decrease by between 30 and 90 percent when the evaluation of pod borer-resistance cowpeas, also known as Barceló’s Thurigensis (BT) cowpea, is completed in the next three years.

Dr. Ibrahim Dzido Kwasi Atokple, project coordinator of the government’s CFTs, said that the project seeks to contribute to food security and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by reducing the pod’s damage, promote grain quality and reduce seasonal crop loss.

“Pod borer infestation is a major constraint to cowpea production in Africa,” Atokple told IPS.

“In the absence of resistance genes in the cowpea germplasm, a new [biotechnological] innovation has identified a resistance gene from a bacteria species [Bacillus thuringensis]. This has been transferred into the local cowpea variety to kill the pod borer and also reduce the harmful effect of many insecticide sprays the farmers are exposed to.”

Atokple said the innovation was developed and evaluated through a joint public-private partnership with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, the African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF) in Kenya and the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Ghana, as well as other institutions in Nigeria and Burkina Faso.

“From the trial the identified pod borer-resistant cowpea lines will be crossed with the commercial cowpea varieties in Ghana, such as Apagbala, Songotra, Padituya and given to farmers,” he said.

Atokple is convinced that the national annual production of cowpea – today around 205,000 metric tonnes – could be increased by 30 percent with a new GMO crop.

Dr. Prince Addae, project manager of AATF, said fears surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) such as the pod borer-resistant cowpea project should be dispelled, because research suggests GMO-related products convey no ill side effects.

“I think some people do not understand the issue of GMO very well and this is because it is just an innovation to address challenges. There are many countries that had adopted and are using GMO foods,” Addae told IPS.

The plant, said Adde, would continue to be a major staple crop among Ghanaians who cannot afford to buy meat and fish.

Eric Amaning Okoree, secretary of the National Bio-Safety Committee and a deputy director of environment at the Ministry of Environment Science and Technology, said GMO technology was important to stay apace with demographic growth and counteract some effects of climate change, such as lower rainfall.

Addae said a technical advisory committee has been formed to conduct risk assessment into all GMO applications in the country.

But doubts remain.

Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah, chairperson of Food Sovereignty Ghana, a civil society organisation, has called on the government to place an immediate moratorium on the cultivation, importation and consumption of genetically modified foods.

“We are making this appeal as a Ghanaian grassroots food advocacy movement, after credible reports of the start of cultivation of GM seeds in the country. Our group calls for the need for Ghanaians to clearly understand the full implications associated with the cultivation of genetically modified foods before embracing the technology,” he said.

“If [we] Africans fail to get our act together, GM patent domination of our agriculture could be far worse than the combined effects of apartheid, colonialism and slavery. Remember the words of [U.S. Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger, ‘Food is a weapon’.”

The Convention People’s Party (CPP), a smaller opposition party, has also spoken out publically against the GMO initiative.

“We are waiting some way, somehow to become guinea pigs in the hands of some scientific experimentation by people elsewhere before we think, before we come together,” said Ernesto Yeboah, a member of the party’s anti-GMO campaign.

He says research in the U.S., EU and other advanced countries has linked GMOs to sterility, cancer and birth defects.

Yeboah claims GMOs have wreaked havoc in countries like India, where he cites estimates of 125,000 suicides among rural farmers who in recent years allegedly were overcome by insurmountable debt from the purchase of expensive GMO seeds and the promise of bountiful crops.

Dr. Wilson Dogbe, a research scientist at the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, told IPS that Ghana does not need to start cultivating GMOs, because the population can feed itself by exploring other agricultural opportunities.

“There are some fundamental things we are not getting right as a country,” he said. “The state should support sustainable farming by providing the necessary resources, infrastructure and enough technical personnel.

“For example, the issue of the current farmer-agriculture extension officers’ ratio, which is currently one Agricultural Extension Officers to about 1,300 farmers, should be addressed before thinking about starting GMO,” he said.

Children and adults from Northern Region who migrate to southern Ghana in search of a living usually take up work as “Kayayeis” or porters. Courtesy: Albert Oppong-Ansah

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ACCRA, Dec 13 2013 (IPS)

It was 20-year-old Fizer Boa who first migrated south to Ghana’s capital, Accra, to work in the local Abobloshie market as a porter or “Kayayei”.

“I agreed with my mother when she advised me to go join my friend who was working as a Kayayei in Accra. I did not object to the idea because … we hardly had three square meals a day,” she told IPS. Reduced rainfall in the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo district in Ghana’s Northern Region, where Boa comes from, has resulted in low yields for the past two years, leaving her family barely able to survive.

In the city, Boa’s job involves carrying loads of goods on her head or back from one place to another for fees as low as 50 cents or as high as six dollars.

Soon after she came here, her two sisters dropped out of school and left their home to follow her and also work as Kayayeis."It is evident ... that land scarcity and soil infertility are one of the main elements pushing people off the land to seek a safe-haven in the south.” -- research scientist Dr. Wilson Dogbe

“My other siblings dropped out of school to join me in Accra because my mother could no longer pay for additional school levies, such as Parent Teachers Association fees, and school materials,” Boa said. Schooling is usually free in this West African nation, though each school charges its own additional costs and administration fees.

Combined, the sisters earn up to 30 dollars on a good day.

Kayayei is a trade often taken up by children and adults from the Northern Region who migrate to southern Ghana in search of a living. And according to Dr. Wilson Dogbe, a research scientist at the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, one of the major causes of this migration is the changing environment in the north.

The Northern Region is a predominantly rural-based community, and farmers there have become vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

“The problem is that the Northern Region currently is experiencing low rainfall, soil infertility, and increased temperatures as high as 47 degrees Celsius. It is evident from research conducted over the past few years that land scarcity and soil infertility are one of the main elements pushing people off the land to seek a safe-haven in the south,” he said.

The Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), an NGO based in the Northern Region’s capital Tamale, estimates the number of Kayayei in Accra and Kumasi, a city in southern Ghana, is over 80,000.

Some of these climate refugees, who are mostly young girls between the ages of 18 and 30 sent by their families to earn an income, fetch water for people, work in chop-bars (local restaurants), and as hawkers and shop attendants.

But their existence is a precarious one. Mohammed Awal, NORSAAC’s director, told IPS that the young girls were the most vulnerable of these climate refugees as they had no place to live and mostly slept in open-air truck stops at the mercy of the weather and other threats. 

“A lot of these migrants, especially girls, return home to their families with sexually transmitted diseases,” he said, adding that many of the young women who fell pregnant were unable to trace the fathers, or experienced problems with illegal abortions.

Boa said she sometimes faced “life-threating situations like sexual harassment from men” and said she too was forced to sleep in open-air truck stops.

Dogbe said the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), established in 2010 by the government to alleviate poverty in Ghana’s north and address the north-south youth migration, had not done much to reduce migration.

“It was supposed to provide opportunities for poor peasants, especially women, to own assets … sustain their food crop production and protect the fragile eco-system of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone. But much has not been done,” he said.

He said that 80 percent of the roads in Northern Region remained impassable and farmers still did not have the necessary machines like tractors and harvesters to make their jobs easier. He added that farmers also needed soft loans to be able to purchase the right inputs and seeds.

However, Ghana’s deputy minister of food and agriculture Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan told IPS that SADA and the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project would ensure the region once again became Ghana’s breadbasket.

The World Bank and the U.S Agency for International Development have funded the agricultural project to the tune of 145 million dollars to develop infrastructure, such as roads and irrigation schemes, in order to improve agriculture productivity in the Accra Plains and the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone.

But until this happens Boa and her sisters will keep trying to find ways to earn a living far from home.

“Hopefully, we will work hard to save money and send some to our parents,” she said. But she and her sisters dream of having a better life and being more than just porters. They hope to be able to enroll in vocational training “such as fashion design, hair dressing to be able to earn a decent as well as sustainable income.”

Large-scale farmer, Alhaji Alhassan Gunda Zakaria of the Gunda Producing Company in Tamale, northern Ghana holds up an agriculture insurance certificate from the Ghana Agriculture Insurance Programme. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Ghana, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Smallholder farmer Suleman Mustapha Simbia, 40, is pleased with the introduction of an insurance initiative called the Ghana Agriculture Insurance Programme. The programme is being implemented in this West African nation to help farmers who had been suffering from loss of income as a result of the bad weather conditions that affect their yields. 

“I no longer think of losing my yield due to the low or high rainfall. My confidence and love for farming has grown. And this year, I have increased the number of acreages I cultivate from 1.2 to 2.4 hectares,” he told IPS.

The system is fairly straightforward. A farmer pays one-tenth of the total cost of their crops at the beginning of the farming season to GAIP. And if there is no rain for 12 consecutive days, the system triggers a payout.

This is the second year of its operation, and to date a total of 136 smallholder farmers received payouts on claims from the Ghana Agriculture Insurance Programme (GAIP) because of the drought in northern Ghana. While no exact figures are available for how much was paid out, the programme pays farmers depending on the size of their land and the amount they invested in inputs. On average, farmers who invest 150 dollars in inputs for half a hectare of land could be paid out between 200 to 300 dollars, depending on how severely they were affected by the weather.

But the scheme is dependent on automatic weather stations (AWS). AWS is a map-based system that records daily climatic data including wind, rainfall, relative humidity and temperature. The insurance programme uses data from AWS to ascertain when farmers are affected by the weather, and payouts are made based on this data.

Agro meteorologist at GAIP Evelyn Debrah told IPS that the programme benefits farmers by protecting them from the cost of production during extreme weather patterns and allows them to remain in production following the disaster.

“For example, if there are more than 12 consecutive dry days (less than 2.5 mm of rain) within 20 km of a GMet weather station, it will automatically trigger a payout to policy holders,” she said.

The initiative is funded by the German government under the Innovative Insurance Products for the Adaptation to Climate Change project. It is implemented through a public private partnership between the National Insurance Commission, the Ghana Insurance Association and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

But Simbia is concerned that not enough farmers are able to sign up to the insurance scheme as only those who cultivate crops within the vicinity of 18 existing AWS in the country’s Northern Upper West and Upper East Regions can do so.

“It is my fear that many farmers in the country, especially in Ghana’s north, who are vulnerable are not benefiting from the initiative due the challenge of limited weather stations,” he said.

For the past four years smallholder farmers in Ghana’s Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions have been affected by low rains, which resulted in their most-cultivated crops like maize, rice and yams withering before they could mature.

Statistics from the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) indicate that across the country there has been a decline below the long-term mean of 6,550 mm, which was the normal rainfall pattern at the beginning of the 2000s.

Mathias Fosu, principal research scientist at the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute, told IPS that studies conducted by the institute indicate that climate change has impacted on rainfall patterns in the northern part of the country.

The amount of rainfall recorded annually varies between 800 mm and 1,600 mm. However, the rainfall trend for Tamale from the period 1960 to 2010 suggests a slight decrease in rainfall over the six decades, he said.

A 2012 survey conducted in 38 districts in the Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions by the United Nations World Food Programme, with Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Ghana Statistical Service, showed that food insecurity was rife in those areas.

The survey, titled the Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis, revealed that 140,000 people out of 680,000 interviewed were experiencing severe food insecurity, and women, mainly widows, headed the majority of these households.

The situation was attributed to general poverty and poor agriculture performance. A decline in crop production, low soil fertility and limited pesticide use and the lack of irrigation are some of the factors affecting this. The report recommended increased investment in adaptation measures to sustain agricultural production and make households resilient to climate change.

Simbia thinks GAIP and the government should do this by expanding the scope of the initiative from the current 18 automatic weather stations to cover a total of 50 districts in the three northern provinces.

But Debrah pointed out that the number of AWS had increased countrywide.

“In the last two years GIZ purchased and installed a total of 36 automatic weather stations for GMet … with the aim of helping GAIP improve and expand their service to famers,” Debrah said. She added that five additional AWS were purchased and installed by the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Programme, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, bringing the total to 41 AWS nationwide.

One large-scale farmer, Alhaji Alhassan Gunda Zakaria who owns and runs the Gunda Producing Company in Tamale, thinks that the insurance is a good thing.

Aside from farming himself, he provides farming inputs like seeds and fertiliser to smallholders on credit, which they pay back in produce at the end of the harvest season. Last year, he paid for the insurance for 20 of the smallholder farmers he works with, and this year he added 50 more.

Zakaria said he manages about 3,000 smallholder farmers in the region and he was one of the first beneficiaries of the insurance.

“I think I will have peace of mind to work because I will not need to worry much about low rains. I want to insure most of my farmers, but the worry now is the limited coverage of the weather stations in the region,” he told IPS.

Debrah said GAIP plans to develop and roll out a broad range of agriculture insurance products starting with Weather Index Insurance, whereby payouts are determined by rainfall levels during key phases of crop development.

“Banks are likely to expand their agriculture leading portfolios once the risk of default is reduced via locally relevant insurance products increasing their profitability in the process,” Debrah said.

“Insurance coverage will allow greater access to credit and inputs for more farmers and encourage greater investment in agriculture as farmers increase in confidence and aim to further commercialise their farming activities access to broader and even international markets,” she added.

Musah Razark Adams, 13, (r) shows the sling shot that he uses to hit birds with when he works in a local rice field. Adams and his brother, Seidu, 15, (l) work to so that they can pay for school materials and levies. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
WUBA, Northern Ghana, May 30 2013 (IPS)

It is a school day but 13-year-old Musah Razark Adams, a Grade 5 primary school pupil in Wuba, northern Ghana, is standing in a rice field wielding a “koglung” – a sling shot to hit birds with.

He is not being a naughty boy. For a month of working from 7am to 6pm he is paid 10 dollars and given a 25-kg bag of rice or maize for every half hectare of land he protects by scaring the birds away.

Adams and other pupils like him have to engage in the arduous task popularly known in northern Ghana as “Away” – which means keeping birds from feeding on paddy farms. And this is usually done during school hours.

Schooling is nominally free in this West African nation, though each school charges its own additional costs. And children, ironically, are employed in “Away” in order to pay these additional school levies, such as Parent Teachers Association fees, and to buy school materials.“Although I feel ashamed forcing the children to engage in ‘Away’, I have no alternative means of getting money to care for them.” -- Iddrisu Adams

“When school started this year I asked my father to give me money to buy my educational materials and he told me to do what other people do to acquire the necessary items for school. He said he did not have money. So I have to do this (scare away birds) because all our farm produce has been sold to take care of feeding our family,” Adams tells IPS.

He dreams of being able to earn money for shoes and his basic educational needs – a school uniform, books and pencils. But right now, that seems like a far-fetched dream, since he does not have the 60 Ghana Cedi or 30 dollars to pay for them.

“Away” is a common cultural practice in Ghana’s Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions that keeps children out of school for at least a month from April to May, and then again from August to September.

Adams’ father, Iddrisu Adams, 45, has five other children and tells IPS that he is not financially stable enough to provide for them, which is why his sons engage in “Away”. Adams’ 15-year-old brother, Seidu, also works to scare birds.

“Although I feel ashamed forcing the children to engage in ‘Away’, I have no alternative means of getting money to care for them,” he says.

Robert Owusu, a rice farmer in Nyanpkala, Northern Region, tells IPS: “If people are not stationed to man the farm throughout the day the birds will eat the entire rice paddy.”

“Currently we don’t have any other method of scaring the birds although we know the children’s education is at stake,” he says, adding that adults are not employed to do this, as their labour is too expensive.

Though parents do not see it as being against the law, this practice is part of the many instances of child labour in northern Ghana.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child labour as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development. This includes work that interferes with their schooling.

The Department of Social Welfare, Department of Children and ILO have initiated measures over the years to reduce child labour here, but they say these strategies are hampered by poverty in many communities.

Sanday Iddrisu, acting northern regional director for the Department of Children, tells IPS that the Children’s Act of Ghana states that no child should be deprived of access to education and prohibits parents and other individuals from subjecting a child to exploitative labour.

“Basically both international and national regulations are against such practices that expose children to this form of labour, which prevents them from having an education as any ordinary child,” he says.

He adds that many of the campaigns embarked on by his department and the Department of Social Welfare have proved futile. He says parents of children who work often use poverty as an excuse, stating that they cannot provide for their children’s needs without making them work.

While there is a National Plan of Action for the Elimination of Child Labour in Ghana, a survey by the Child Protection Unit at the Department of Labour says the nation has done little to eradicate the practice. About 1.27 million children between the ages of five and 17 in this country of 25 million people are engaged in activities classified as child labour, Emmanuel Otoo, an ILO representative in Ghana, tells IPS.

“Our focus and resources must now be on the operationalisation of the details of the many international and local conventions and laws Ghana has ratified, including the ILO Convention, the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Ghanaian Constitution and the Ghana Children’s Act of 1998,” he says.

Naa Alhassan Issahaku Amadu, the northern regional Ghanaian population officer, says the practice of child labour affects the intellectual, social and physical growth and development of children.

“Children need six universally-accepted teacher-student contact hours. And if they are kept out of class due to ‘Away’ they will miss out on all that has been taught,” he tells IPS.

Adams’ principal, Abdul-Salam Hamza Fataw, says children who engage in the practice are not able to follow lessons to their logical conclusion because of their absenteeism.

Fataw says that during “Away”, between April and May, a class of 50 children shrinks to about eight.

Umal Mohammed Farhim, the Kumbungu District Circuit supervisor of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Northern Region, tells IPS that children have the right to an education.

“Available statistics from Wuba Primary School for instance indicate that last year less than 40 percent of students passed their end of term exams,” he says.

A formal report will be sent to the GES head office in Tamale, the Northern Region’s capital, if a behavioural change approach for the next academic year fails to address the issue.

However, Afua Ayisibea Ohene-Ampofo, a project manager of the Northern Ghana office of the International Fertilizer Development Center, a public international organisation that addresses food security, tells IPS that the practice may not end due to its cultural dimension. She says the issue of child labour is closely linked to traditions that see no issue in encouraging children to work to meet their needs.

Ohene-Ampofo, who has worked as a development officer on various projects in the region for the past 10 years, says the poverty which was making parents force their children to continue the vicious cycle of “Away” could be reduced if parents were equipped with alternative livelihood skills such as bread baking, fashion designing, bee keeping or soap making.

Until then, Adams has to continue working.

“My dream of becoming a teacher may be dashed if I don’t support myself like this. I feel shy and bad engaging in such work, but I have to do it to secure my future … I don’t have a choice.”

Farmer Adams Seidu has been struggling with his harvest in recent years. Courtesy: Albert Oppong-Ansah

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Ghana, Aug 15 2012 (IPS)

In order to ensure that he and his family survive this year’s failed harvest, Adams Seidu, like farmers in other rural communities in Ghana’s Northern Region, has implemented a strategy for survival. They are using what Seidu calls the “one-zero-one strategy” for children, and the “zero-zero-one strategy” for adults.

The equation represents the three meals of a day. One represents a meal, while a zero represents no meal. So Seidu’s four children are able to have breakfast in the morning, nothing at midday, and then a meal in the evening, while he and his wife eat only one meal a day, in the evening – as do many other families in this West African nation.

Food shortages are becoming a concern in the region. A survey on nutrition conducted in March by the Ghana Health Service showed that 32.2 percent of the 208,742 children under five in the Northern Region were malnourished and suffered from stunted growth.

Seidu’s family is surviving, but just barely.

This is because Seidu, who lives at Fuo, a suburb in the Northern Region’s capital, Tamale, has been struggling with his harvest in recent years.

Ghana’s Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions used to be the country’s breadbasket for production of cereals and tubers. But changing weather patterns in these regions, which constitute Ghana’s Savannah zone, have resulted in poor rainfall, small harvests and subsequent food insecurity.

“Last farming season was one of the most devastating periods and saw many farmers lose a great deal due to low rains, which caused the crop to wither before they could mature,” Seidu, who has a small maize, rice and yam farm, told IPS.

During the 2000 rainy season, the Nanumba North district in Northern Region recorded an average rainfall of 1,495 millimetres. But in 2010 over the same period the area recorded only 433 mm.

The reduced rainfall has had a dramatic effect on this region. According to the 2010 National Housing Population Census, the Northern Region is the third-most populated region in Ghana, with about 80 percent of the people engaged in farming. Now, half of the region’s farmers are struggling to survive as their crops continue to fail, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.

Of the two acres of land Seidu cultivated this year, he only harvested three 84-kilogramme bags. “Two years ago I harvested seven bags on the same land. Some of the plants did not flower, let alone bear fruit this year,” said the farmer, who has only one arm.

Statistics from the Northern Regional Office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture indicate that maize production in the region fell from 164,200 metric tonnes in 1991 to less than half that, 78,800 metric tonnes, in 2000. There are no more recent figures available.

Regional principal meteorological officer at the Ghana Meteorological Agency, Kafui Quashiga, told IPS that rainfall has reduced drastically due to climate change over the past 10 years. Statistics compiled by the agency indicate that there has been a decline below the long-term mean of 6,550 mm, which was the normal rainfall pattern at the beginning of the 2000s.

“When you compare the rainfall data from 1991 to 2010 for Wa in the Upper West, Tamale in the north, Navorongo in the Upper East and Krachie in the Volta Region, there is a sharp decline and it is likely that the trend will continue,” he said.

Poverty, illiteracy, disease and malnutrition have now become common features in these regions.

Seidu admitted that because of his low harvest he could no longer afford to pay the school fees for two of his children. “As a result of the poor yields that we have witnessed in recent years, I am able to send only two of my four children to school.”

Another farmer, 60-year-old Nindoo Salisu, told IPS that only three of his 10 children are able to go to school. “We were able to get enough from the land until the weather decided to fail us and made us poor.”

“The situation is very scary, and the earlier something is done about it the better, because it has negative repercussions on our existence as human beings,” Quashiga said.

And while there are some adaptation projects in the region, they have not proved completely successful.

Abubakar Sadique Haruna, a farmer in Ghana’s Northern Region, loans out his tractor as a ploughing service to local peasant farmers.

With the help of the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Programme (ADVANCE), Haruna provides his service to about 400 farmers.

ADVANCE, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, began to operate last year. Through it about 1,000 farmers have been supported with ploughing services, and educated in the use of improved seed, new technology and best farming practices.

Haruna explained that for every acre of land ploughed, the farmers either paid him four dollars – the equivalent of 4.5 litres of fuel – or in kind with an 84-kilogramme bag of maize at the end of the farming season.

Aside from his ploughing services, Haruna supplies farmers with improved quality seeds, agro chemicals and fertilisers. He also educates them on best farming practices to help increase their yields.

“The unfortunate thing is that some farmers, after paying for ploughing, are not able to afford these agro-chemicals (because of the bad harvests),” he told IPS.

Haruna said that 2011 was not a successful year for farmers, as about 200 of his clients could not afford to plough their fields.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s monitoring and evaluation officer, Festus Aaron Langkuu, told IPS that new methods of harvesting water were being tested in some areas.

He said that the Golinga and Bontanga dams in the country’s Northern Region, which were rehabilitated under the Millennium Development Authority Project in 2010, were supplying some farmers with water for their crops.

“Although the government is supporting some farmers with fertilisers, the bottom line is that if there are no rains, these farmers cannot grow their crops, and this will derail (progress towards) the objective of reducing poverty,” Langkuu said.