Ghana’s agricultural sector is critical to economic growth and development. According to data presented by the Ghana Statistical Service, the sector contributes significantly to the nation’s annual GDP. In Ghana agriculture is dominated by smallholder farmers in rural areas, many of whom are family farmers who produce for local consumption and export. A lot of these smallholder families are poor, work under poor conditions, live on the farms and continue to drive the sector’s overall growth with their activities despite infrastructural and economic setbacks.
Today, Ghana’s rural communities are characterized by over-crowded compound housing, unsafe building structures and poor livestock housing. This can be attributed to the limited access to credit facilities for rural farmers. The high cost of construction, coupled with the limited credit for rural farmers make scaling up their farming businesses difficult. With a lot of areas requiring the attention of the government’s resources, the country’s rural regions are not receiving much attention in terms of resource allocation and so development is moving slowly.
The project will involve;
- Constructing steel prefabricated standard houses of two (2) to three (3) bedrooms for farmers living in rural communities
- Making credit available to farmers to enable them roof their uncompleted building projects
- Building community silos in conjunction with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture
- Offering free project management, design, specification, quality control and building evaluation for rural women in agriculture.
AWA will leverage its expertise in roofing and modular construction and our strong local presence to enhance the project’s impact. Our goal for this project is to promote rural infrastructural development in Ghana, starting with our local farmers.
- Motivating smallholder farmers
- Promoting decent living and working conditions
- Reducing homelessness
- Enhancing agricultural productivity
- Promoting agricultural entrepreneurship among the youth
- Improving farmers’ income
- Discouraging rural-urban migration, especially among the youth.
A project such as ours can be tied to agricultural initiatives like the farmers’ day celebration at district, regional and national levels to promote greater participation in agriculture.
In order to execute this project, AWA Roofing Sheets Company Limited will need the endorsement of International Organizations into Agriculture and Ministry of Food and Agriculture, for a long-term loan to keep us in business for the first few years following the project’s launch.