The Northern Ghana Integrated Development Project (NGIDP): Promoting opportunities for sustainable agriculture, social protection and decent work in the agrarian sector. The project which is being funded by the EU is a consortium of ActionAid Ghana, URBANET and Tree Aid Ghana and would span a period of four years, 2019 to 2023. It will lead to the reduction of rural poverty by promoting environmentally sustainable agricultural practices thus contributing to the green economy, creating opportunities for income generation within the agricultural value chain, and enhancing access to social protection services. The specific objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of local CSOs to become drivers of innovation in research-based climate-resilient sustainable agriculture, related social enterprises and responsive social protection. This is in recognition of the crucial role that CSOs and social movements play in the provision of services, especially in rural areas, as well as their power to influence local and national level decisions and policies backed by their constituencies and technical expertise. The project will also address the social and economic vulnerabilities of marginalized groups of people such as women smallholders, unemployed young people and people living with disabilities by building their agencies and capacities for income-generating activities and integrating decent work and social protection within the development of the agricultural sector where most rural women find their livelihoods. Overall, we will reach 825,000 people in the 15 districts of implementation, through the improved delivery of extension services, increased awareness on rights to land, social protection and decent work.

The project has an extensive reach and combines community rootedness and high-level advocacy. In addition to strengthening the community mobilization and advocacy activities of thirty (30) CSOs with a membership of 3,600, it will work in 300 communities in 15 districts3 across the three regions in the north of Ghana (that is Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions) which are high-risk areas and suffer most from changing climate and destructive land use practices. Over a period of 48 months, this action will empower 13,500 marginalized women smallholder farmers, young people and people with disabilities, strengthen 300 women farmer groups, 15 farmer networks and train 1,050 CSO and group leaders, resulting in increased, secure and sustainable incomes, access to social protection mechanisms, more local agri-business enterprises and job opportunities that adhere to decent work principles.

Result/Output 1: CSOs and local movements leading joint community advocacy initiatives and research and supporting the formation of innovative farmer-led extension services.

Result/Output 2: Increased smallholder farmers resilience to the impact of climate change through more effective biodiversity preservation and sustainable agricultural practices that contribute to the green economy.

Result/Output 3: Increased income levels of women and young people through the processing of non-timber forest products, agricultural value chain business, and social enterprises.

Result/Output 4: Increased access to quality social protection schemes for people living in poverty in rural agrarian areas.

Result/Output 5: Gender-responsive decent work principles integrated into national and regional agricultural employments, programmes and policies.

URBANET is the the technical lead in the implementation of activities on sustainable agriculture.

Project Duration: May 2019 to June 2023.

Donor: European Union

2AFRICA is a large-scale, science-based “research-in-development” project focused on putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers growing legume crops in Africa. The project’s vision of success is to build sustainable, long-term partnerships to enable African smallholder farmers to benefit from symbiotic N2 fixation by grain legumes through effective production technologies, including inoculants and fertilizers.

In partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), URBANET has, in the first phase of the project, disseminated improved grain legume varieties, rhizobium inoculants, and phosphate-based fertilizers to 5000 farmers in Karaga and the Savelugu/Nanton districts of the Northern Region.

Farmers are introduced to new technologies through several approaches, such as demonstration farms, adaptation farms, farmer field days, radio programmes and video shows.

URBANET also ensures access to inputs and last-mile delivery of the project by linking farmers to seed companies in Tamale (Heritage Seeds Company Limited) and facilitating community seed production. Facilitation of linkages between farmers and input distributors allows for improved access to legume inputs by providing farmers with contacts with input dealers.

Another key objective of the project is ensuring farmers have access to market output. URBANET conducts producer group training on grain quality and market standards to familiarize farmers with the quality the market desires. URBANET also facilitates the marketing of farmer produce through farmers’ collective marketing by linking farmers to specific buyers and processors.

As part of the project, URBANET dedicates considerable energy and resources to ensuring that farm work burdens are reduced for women.  This is achieved by identifying and evaluating simple labour-saving tools with women farmers, as well as encouraging tractor service providers to buy and provide services to women.

In this phase, URBANET is focused on the dissemination of legume technologies to farmers in the Savelugu, Karaga and Kumbungu districts of the Northern Region of Ghana.

The 2SCALE project is the largest agribusiness incubator in Africa, working with farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs in 12 countries. The project builds networks that connect farmers, buyers, and intermediaries, enabling them to create and grow new businesses. The project mobilizes and trains groups of farmers and creates the necessary linkages to ensure that all elements—technology, organizational capacity, market access, credit, and extension advice—are in place. The desired result is an agribusiness cluster and commercial value chains that can compete effectively in the market, benefiting producers, consumers, and everyone else. Private sector firms are supported by the project to find business opportunities for sourcing products from or selling agro-inputs to smallholder farmers in Africa.

URBANET has been working with the International Fertilizer Development Center on the project in the Savelugu/Nanton municipality since 2013. As a business support services provider, URBANET provides business support services to two clusters: the Libga Chilli Pepper Cluster and the Savelugu Soybean Cluster.

URBANET, in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, initiated a project to promote urban and peri-urban vulnerable farmers’ access to land for farming. The project was preceded by research, community-level sensitization, dialogue meetings with stakeholders (chiefs and land owners, planning authorities), and culminated in a project dubbed “Zoning of Agricultural Lands/Green Belts.”. The project has since facilitated the zoning of about 475 acres of land in urban and peri-urban Tamale to be reserved purposely for agriculture especially to support women engaged in vegetable farming as their main source of livelihoods.