By Lydia Kukua Asamoah
Koforidua, Sept. 25, GNA – The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), through its Women in Agricultural Development Directorate (WIAD), in collaboration with the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), has held a multistakeholder forum in Koforidua to promote equitable access to agricultural extension and advisory services, particularly for women farmers.
The Gender and Rural Advisory Services (GRAS) Assessment Validation Workshop and the Fifth GRAS Forum sought to chart a sustainable path towards improving women farmers’ access to agricultural extension and advisory services.
Available data indicate that women constitute about 52 per cent of Ghana’s agricultural labour force, yet only a small proportion of women farmers have access to extension and advisory services needed to improve their farming activities.
The disparity has been attributed, among other factors, to long-standing social norms and traditional practices that limit women’s access to critical agricultural services and consequently affect their productivity and livelihoods.
The GRAS multistakeholder meeting, held from September 23 to 25, 2026, enabled participants to review and strengthen the GRAS Assessment Report.
The Fifth GRAS Forum also provided a platform for stakeholders to reflect on progress, share lessons and good practices, and agree on practical measures to sustain, strengthen and institutionalise the GRAS agenda under MoFA-WIAD beyond CABI’s Plantwise support and leadership.
Mr Solomon Agyeman Duah, Communication Specialist at CABI’s West Africa office in Accra, told the Ghana News Agency that GRAS emerged from the CABI Plantwiseprogramme following the identification of gender disparities in farmers’ access to agricultural advisory services.
Mr Duah, who is also the Gender Focal Person for CABI, said the Forum was instituted in 2022 following lessons from the Plantwise intervention programme, which helped farmers to identify and manage crop pests and improve crop health.
He said an assessment of the programme revealed that women were significantly underrepresented among farmers benefiting from advisory services.
The assessment, also revealed that “in terms of reach, women were very much underrepresented over the years that we implemented the Plantwise programme.
“When we assessed the programme and then we were going to continue with another programme, we agreed that it was necessary to look at some of those challenges or shortcomings of the previous programmes and one of them included advisory services being equitable for both male and female farmers.
“Then based on an assessment we did, we found that advisory services in the country is sort of designed in a way that disadvantages women, although our agriculture sector involves a lot of women in terms of the actual labour that goes into it-women constitutes 52 per cent of agriculture labour force in Ghana.
“But when it comes it to advisory services, we only know that between 15 to 30 per cent women farmers receive advisory services, so it means that the remaining 75 percent do not receive advisory services although they are into agriculture. This tells us that there will be a productivity gap.”
He said after that revelation CABI decided to come out with some interventions that would ensure that advisory services especially in agriculture space, is “a little equitable so that we bring the women from where they are and also make sure that they have more access to some of these services and that will help them to improve their productivity.”
Mr Duah said the multistakeholder approach brought together sector ministries and institutions dealing with gender and agriculture, including the Ministry responsible for gender and social protection, civil society organisations, private sector actors and other institutions involved in extension delivery.
The Forum, he said, served as a platform for advocacy and collective action to address challenges within the agricultural advisory services delivery system.
He said the work of the Forum over the past five years had identified three key areas requiring attention: policy implementation, the underrepresentation of women in service delivery, and the use of Information and Communication Technologies to provide more equitable extension services.
Mr Duah said leveraging ICT could help overcome some of the traditional barriers preventing women from accessing agricultural advisory services.
He said a major objective of this year’s Forum was to secure national ownership and sustainability of GRAS as CABI winds down its funding and leadership role following the conclusion of the Plantwise programme that gave birth to the initiative.
“So, our major goal at this year’s meeting is to get stakeholders to take hold of it and then own it nationally so that it becomes a national mechanism for ensuring that gender is well mainstreamed into advisory services,” Mr Duah said.
Mr Peter Aboagye, Director of WIAD, in a keynote address read on behalf of the Chief Director of MoFA, acknowledged the commitment and contributions of institutions and individuals that had supported GRAS since its inception.
He said the Fifth GRAS Forum provided an opportunity for stakeholders to consolidate the progress made since 2022 and build a sustainable platform for continued action.
Mr Aboagye said the Forum represented an important milestone in collective efforts to ensure that agricultural and rural advisory services responded effectively to the different needs, circumstances and aspirations of women and men across Ghana.
“Let us therefore use this Forum to strengthen coordination, deepen institutional commitment, mobilise resources, and use to strengthen evidence and accountability.
“And above all, let us use it to ensure that the voices and experiences of women farmers remain visible in agricultural policy, planning and implementation at both national and sub-national levels,” he said.
Mr Aboagye said the proposed transition appropriately identified MoFA-WIAD as the institutional anchor, while calling on member institutions to integrate GRAS priorities into their plans and budgets and encouraging partners to contribute expertise, evidence, influence and financing.
He said the transformation of Ghana’s agricultural sector required an advisory system that reached farmers with the right information at the right time and through appropriate and accessible channels.
Such a system, he said, must recognise the different realities of women and men, young people and persons with disabilities, as well as farmers in accessible communities and those in remote areas.
Mr Aboagye assured the Forum of MoFA’s continued commitment to working with stakeholders to advance the GRAS agenda.
Participants included representatives of Regional Departments of Agriculture, development partners, research and academic institutions, civil society organisations, private sector actors and farmer-based organisations.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah
Reporter: Lydia Kukua Asamoah