Bawku West: As part of efforts toward promoting gender equity and rural transformation, Ingraining Development for Empowerment and Advancement of Society (IDEAS Ghana), an NGO, has led a landmark initiative in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region to enhance women’s access to productive land for agriculture.
According to Ghana News Agency, with support from Africa Action, Germany, the organisation mobilised traditional leaders, assembly members, and community stakeholders across 11 communities to commit formally, and in writing, to allocate fertile farmlands to women for climate-smart farming. In May, after a series of community engagements, IDEAS Ghana convened dialogue sessions involving traditional authorities, assembly members, and women leaders within Kpalsako, Farig, Kamenga, Gbere, Tarikom, Kabore, Bugoure, Goosise, Azupopunga, Widnaba, and Komaka.
Dr. Joseph Ayembilla, Executive Director of IDEAS Ghana, during the engagement at Zebilla, indicated that women constituted nearly 70 percent of Ghana’s agricultural labour force yet owned less than 10 percent of land. He explained that in predominantly subsistence-farming communities like those in Bawku West, the imbalance had deepened cycles of poverty and deprivation. He hinted that land was not only a means of production but also a source of security, identity, and resilience.
Dr. Ayembilla said despite being the backbone of farming in the district, women had long faced structural barriers to land access due to cultural norms, inheritance rules, and discriminatory land tenure systems. He said the initiative was a targeted intervention to shift mindsets and policies at the community level. He emphasized that these discussions were platforms for truth, empathy, and action, where women shared real stories of renting small, unproductive lands or relying entirely on male relatives to farm. These testimonies became the turning point.
Dr. Ayembilla noted that while traditional leaders cautioned about existing land tenure limitations, they acknowledged that excluding women from decision-making over land use was no longer tenable. Moved by the IDEAS Ghana initiative and experiences from the women, the community chiefs and elders agreed to break some traditional norms and endorse the allocation of specific plots of land to women for long-term use.
He indicated that the written resolutions now stood as binding community-level commitments, setting a precedent for locally driven land reform. Chief of Gbere, Naba Mark Abuguraug Awingura, remarked that the community could not develop if more than half of its farmers, the women, were denied access to productive land. He stated that if women thrive, the whole community thrives.
The initiative to give women access to fertile lands was built on an earlier 2024 workshop organized for selected community leaders to explore inclusive land governance and sustainable agriculture practices. The GNA understands that IDEAS Ghana used that foundation to expand advocacy efforts and promote climate-smart agriculture as a shared development goal. IDEAS Ghana reiterated that land access must be treated as a developmental right, and recognizing women as rightful land users was essential for unlocking the economic potential of rural communities.