Six
out of every ten people in the Talensi District are said to be condemned to
chronic hunger and extreme poverty. This is according to the Budget Planning
and Coordinating Unit (BPCU) of the Talensi District Assembly. Women and
children constitute more than half of this figure.
In
response to the situation, the Ghana Trade and Livelihoods Coalition (GTLC), a
social enterprise and research organisation, has acquired one hundred acres of
land for shea production and shea-butter processing in the district.
The
project is expected to create hundreds of jobs and curb rural-urban migration
at Yinduri and Tongo-Bio, two communities in the district where five thousand
shea trees will be grown. One hundred women are to be given what officials of
the Coalition have described as direct jobs in shea tree plantation, shea-nut
picking and shea-butter processing.
The
Coordinator of the Coalition, Ibrahim Akalbila, announced this arrangement
during a stakeholders meeting held at Tongo, capital of the Talensi District.
The meeting saw in attendance such key actors in the shea industry as the
Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Ghana National Fire Service, the Forestry
Commission, shea-nut pickers groups and non-governmental organisations among
others. Mr. Akalbila also announced that seven districts in the Northern
Region, five in the Upper East Region and five in the Upper West Region will
benefit from the project.
“For
the women involved in the shea-nut and shea butter production,” said Mr.
Akalbila, “there was an issue of quality, and access to market was also a
challenge for them. Although the shea-nut industry has a potential, the women
were not benefiting from it. This project is to turn that around. One, to
develop plantation; to provide training to the women to be able to improve the
quality of the nuts and the butter they produce, so they could access better
markets and improve incomes; and to improve livelihoods across the areas where
we are going to work.”
Speaking
to the media on behalf of shea-nut pickers groups, the Project Coordinator of
the Talensi Area Women Development Project (TAWODEP), Doris Acharibia,
described the project as a huge break particularly from the middle men who,
according to her, have been exploiting shea-nut pickers.
“You
can realise that it is not easy for the women, beginning from the picking to
the production,” Mrs. Acharibia said. “In the end, they don’t benefit much.
They go, they fight with snakes. They go at dawn to pick the nuts. Then, they
parboil it. After parboiling, they dry it; they crash it. Even the procedure in
producing the shea butter is not an easy thing. Yet, they don’t benefit
anything. It’s rather the middle men who benefit from the butter. For example,
they buy a bowl of shea-nuts from the women at Gh¢10 and sell it twice that
amount. And even when the middle men come to buy the shea-nuts from the women,
they weigh it. They can buy two bags and get three bags from it. So, you see
that the women rather suffer for nothing.”
The
Upper East Regional Focal Person for the Coalition, Richard Ananga, told Savannahnews
the shea plantation would be interspersed with soya beans and some other
leguminous crops. He said research had shown that shea trees could mature just within
five years when planted alongside leguminous crops and with bushfire properly
held in check.
By Edward Adeti
By Edward Adeti
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