By Albert Allotey, GNA
Accra, Nov. 05, GNA –The FILMA ImpactLab has launched Cohort Two of young researchers from four Ghanaian universities at a workshop in Accra.
It is to enable them to produce vital evidence to shape finance and markets of smallholder farmers and rural enterprises.
The 16 new cohorts included participants from the University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the University for Development Studies.
The event was organised in partnerships with Mastercard Foundation, and Temple Investments with support from SEND Ghana and AV Ventures.
Madam Cecilia Hesse, the Managing Director, Temple Investments, said her organisation believed that money, power and opportunity must serve people, not the other way around, adding that, “That belief drives FILMA, our flagship partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.”
She said Cohort One had concluded its work, and its lesson was clear, stating that success could not be measured by the availability of funding alone.
“It must be measured by whether the right social structures, discipline, and linkages exist so that a young person in Kintampo, Zabzugu, Nkwanta, Techiman, or Sogakope can access finance, produce, process, and sell in a dignified and fulfilling way,” she pointed out.
Madam Hesse noted that the lesson from Cohort One was already turning into action through Catalytic Finance Facility, the National Inclusive and Indigenous Market Actors’ Convention, and the engagement with the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Job Creation.
“Every programme is a bundle of assumptions, FILMA included. Cohort One of the FILMA ImpactLab began testing ours to shift that narrative, and Cohort Two must take it even further to help us deepen the impact,” she urged.
She said in North Tongu District in the Volta Region alone, young people have saved about one million Ghana Cedis through 189 savings groups, and more than 1,300 have received input credit or cash loans.
“A very encouraging set of numbers,’ she noted, and asked whether the credit was growing their businesses or just helping families to get through the lean season.
The Managing Director also asked whether the savings groups were bridges to formal finance, or a place young people stayed.
Madam Hesse tasked the 16 Cohort Two researchers to challenge assumptions and ask difficult questions and follow the evidence wherever it leads, adding, “We don’t want research that simply validates our work.
“We want evidence that shows us what works, what doesn’t, and what we must do differently while respecting what the communities already know. The women in a savings group in Battor or a market community in Nyamidekope.
“Your task is quite straightforward. Help us find evidence to help shape solutions to real problems facing real people. In return, we commit to honest access to our data and our LMAs,” she told the new Cohort.
Ms Margarita Lopez-Garcia, the Programme Manager, FILMA, in an interview said for the organisation to reduce the level of poverty in rural areas and get the youths into employment they provided them with skills, access to financial services, markets and also develop the ecosystem to make them flourished into economic activity.
“We also find out that it is important to see what the youths want. Some of them are moving away from agriculture and they are migrating into businesses and so once they are focused on a specific activity that determined the path of entrepreneurship that can have big impact in the community,” she stated.
She said this helped them to employ other youths while supporting their elders or other family members.
“So, it is really important to bring them out into an employment area,” she said.
Ms Lopez-Garcia noted that agriculture was one of the biggest sectors of Ghana and that was why they were encouraging the youth to venture into that area and they are not only encouraging primary production but also looking at how to add value to the products and develop enterprises as well.
Dr Yaw Osei Asare, University of Ghana Research Coordinator on the FILMA programme, highlighted the activity of Cohort One and said Cohort Two research was very important and necessary because FILMA wanted to utilise the evidence on the ground to act for the beneficiaries to get the needed inputs.
He said the research was being undertaken in four regions of Ghana namely, Oti, Volta, North-East, and Northern.
He said the programme was providing financial inclusion for the “Last Mile Actors” thus those who were into agriculture/enterprises and difficult to reach in the rural areas, precisely women.
Dr Asare said in the Cohort One the first thing the researchers found was financial support in terms of working capital where the women received funding in catalytic in nature, meaning that it was more concessionary about 15 per cent and those with disabilities 10 per cent.
“Very concessionary and the researchers are saying that receiving these fundings from the programme has translated into expanding business operations of the beneficiaries and creating more jobs while employing others,” he said.
“This is the first phase, and we are believing that once this intervention is sustained it will go well with the people in the four regions,” he stated.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah