The Royal Bank pushes operations to deprived communities

Financial service provision in places outside of Ghana’s big cities has been upheld by mostly rural banks and microfinance institutions.

But majority of the population still remain unbanked, prompting the need for deeper penetration into local communities with financial inclusion.

The Royal Bank, a wholly owned Ghanaian universal banking entity, is pushing its operations to offer services to deprived communities.

Head of Financial Control and Strategy, David Okyere Nyarko, tells Luv Biz training and financing for local businesses is among priority areas of the bank.

“We are not just looking at areas which are very densely populated but we are going into communities outside the main business districts where the people don’t have banking facilities to provide these services to them,” he stated.

According to Mr. Okyere Nyarko, the focus is to spread employment opportunities to such areas and extend other support services to the local communities.

Within a year of operations, The Royal Bank has established 12 branches with a target of an additional 25 by end of year. The bank chalked a Gh₵13.1 profit in its first 16 months of operations.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Telemedicine to aid maternal health in Ahafo Ano South District

The Ahafo Ano South District is scaling up the piloting of telemedicine in the provision of medical services to pregnant women in the area.

Most women in the local communities are not visiting the health facilities for ante and post-natal services. This has been attributed to financial constraints and the inconvenience of traveling long distances to health centres.

Through the use of telephones, the district health directorate is hoping to improve the situation.

Telemedicine involves the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide clinical health care to eliminate distance barriers.

District Director of Health Services, Reuben Bedzrah, says ten telephones systems have been acquired for the ten public health facilities in the district.

He is confident the system should improve maternal health care in the district.

“Any pregnant woman who comes to the facility for the first time, we are going to pick her mobile phone number or anyone who is closer to her and there is a log book at the facility; at any time that a pregnant woman is called on this phone, the basic information is going to be logged,” Mr. Bedzrah explained.

Current rate of deliveries by skilled and unskilled traditional birth attendants (TBAs) is between 30-50% from 2011 to 2013.

Mr. Bedzrah says measures to improve the rate include training the TBAs and empowering community health nurses to register pregnant women to extend the needed support.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Results show Africa can eradicate Striga

Improved technologies being promoted by the Integrated Striga Management for Africa (ISMA) project have shown promise that Striga—a parasitic weed that destroys cereal and legume fields—can be eradicated from Africa.

Infesting up to 4 million hectares of land under maize production in sub-Saharan Africa, Striga causes farmers yield losses of up to 80% representing about US$1.2 billion, and affects approximately 100 million people in the continent.

In the last three years, the ISMA project has deployed an integrated approach for managing Striga while improving soil fertility and reducing the Striga seed bank for sustainable increases in crop yields in some selected communities in Nigeria and Kenya. 

Specifically, these included cultural practices such as intercropping maize with legumes (soybean and groundnut); crop rotation of maize with soybean; a “push-pull” technology that involves intercropping cereals with Striga-suppressing Desmodium forage legume; using Striga-resistant maize and cowpea varieties; using maize varieties resistant to Imazapyr (IR)—a BASF herbicide (StrigAway®) which is coated on the maize seeds and which kills the Striga; and adopting Striga biocontrol technologies which uses a Striga host-specific fungal pathogen.

Dr David Chikoye, IITA Director for Southern Africa, said results from the project showed that the battle against Striga could be won.

“We will eradicate Striga in Africa just as America did,” he said at the Annual Review and Planning Meeting of ISMA in Abuja.


IITA Deputy Director General for Research, Dr Ylva Hillbur, in her opening remarks called for concerted efforts from partners to tackle the Striga challenge.

Over 70 stakeholders gathered in Abuja for the 3-day annual event which sought to evaluate the successes, challenges, and opportunities of the project, identify gaps, and plan how to implement the decisions to successfully scale out Striga management technologies to rural farmers in the next coming year. 

Dr Mel Olouch, ISMA Project Manager, said “we have established partners and stakeholder capacity in Kenya and Nigeria and installed Striga seed processing facilities in Kenya; awareness is high. Already, registration of the herbicide has been achieved in both countries and we expect to release two IR maize varieties in Nigeria in 2014.’’ 

He said that some of the scaling up approaches that need to be adopted include the use of volunteer farmers to reduce costs and increase ownership, and use of complementary inputs and empowerment of stakeholders to give farmers the best technologies.

The Senior Program Officer for Agriculture Development of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr Yilma Kebede, looked at future plans for the project while expressing that the project is close to reaching farmers and addressing their concerns/problems due to Striga. 

He emphasized that there needs to be concerted efforts to profile the farmers reached such that the take-home message will be sustainable for them in the long run. “Demonstrations need to be focused and there is greater need to engage a wide range of stakeholders in controlling Striga. 

The various institutions involved should synergize to promote the project and scale out to farmers because no one partner will be responsible for the success of the technologies in the end,’’ he said.

Project partners include CIMMYT, AATF, icipe, Bayero University, KNARDA, BSADP, seed and chemical companies, extension workers, Scientists and the private sector.

Civil society tracks progress of VPA in legal lumber trade

Civil society groups in the forestry sector have been reflecting on progress of Ghana’s the forest governance reform at the meeting in Kumasi.

Ghana has, in the past two years, been developing a system for the implementation of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union for the trade in legal timber.

Illegal lumber is the bane of the country timber industry – the forest cover has reduced significantly over the past four decades and the remaining are heavily degraded.  

The VPA is to help improve transparency and accountability by ensuring that timber products exported to the EU from Ghana have been legally acquired, harvested, transported and exported in compliance with the legal requirements.

According to interest groups at the Kumasi meeting, there have been some improvements since the Partnership was signed four years ago.

Program Officer at Civic Response, Samuel Mensah Mawutor says reflections from participants point to transparency by district forestry offices in working with civil society groups.

“They are easily able to obtain information related to logging activities, royalties, revenues at the local level and that is very good because if people want to be part of a process, transparency is very critical,” he stated.

There is also increased public engagement and community reach out on the VPA system.

Mr. Mawutor however says there are setbacks with the decentralization of the forestry services, stating that “the top hierarchy in the districts is a bit removed from forest management.”

The CSOs believe increased district level engagement would strengthen monitoring system at the community level and ensure revenue from forest resources for greater benefits.

“Communities who have seen timber extracted from their areas do not see any benefits coming to them, but if district assemblies will take particular interest in forest management and do development projects with these royalties, then communities would increasingly be conscious of benefits from forest and they are inclined to protect it the more,” noted Mr. Mawutor.

The civil society meeting is to deepen engagements on the implementation of the VPA for a review process with the EU.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Report urges U.S. commitment to address climate change impact on global food security

A new report is urging the US government to take action to curb the risks climate change poses to global food security.

It explains how higher temperatures, changes in rainfall and natural disasters caused by climate change could undermine food production and put food supplies at risk. In total, climate change could reduce food production growth by 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century.

The report was released by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs at the Council’s Global Food Security Symposium 2014.

The report, “Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate”, calls on the US government to integrate climate change adaptation into its global food security strategy.

Recommendations include:

·         Passing legislation for a long-term global food and nutrition security strategy.  

·         Increasing funding for agricultural research on climate change adaptation. Research priorities should include improving crop and livestock tolerance to higher temperatures and volatile weather, combating pests and disease and reducing food waste.

·         Collecting better data and making information on weather more widely available to farmers. There are significant global data gaps right now on weather; water availability, quality, and future requirements; crop performance; land use; and consumer preferences.

·         Increasing funding for partnerships between US universities and universities and research institutions in low-income countries, to train the next generation of agricultural leaders.

·         Advancing international action through urging that food security be addressed through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.  

Rural banks’ total assets losing grounds to industry competition

Rural and community banks are losing grounds in the total assets of Ghana’s banking industry, says Raymond Amanfu, Head of Other Financial Institutions Supervision Department of the Bank of Ghana.

Total assets of the sector stood at Gh₵1,864.55 million as at March 2014, accounting for 3.86 percent of total assets of the banking industry, compared with the 4.71 percent recorded in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the top 26 of the 139 RCBs in the country controlled 52.5% and 50.8% of total deposits and credit respectively.

The rural banks must therefore re-strategize to achieve a 10 percent share of the industry by 2017, stated Mr. Amanfu.

According to him, short term liquidity, credit and technological risks continue to pose the greatest challenges to rural and community banks.

“The current competitive microfinance space calls for RCBs to be mindful of liquidity risk. RCBs must have liquidity contingency plans to deal with short term liquidity challenges,” he admonished.

He also wants the rural banks to speed up with technological risk associated with both software and hardware systems.

Mr. Amanfu was speaking at a seminar in Kumasi to expose the rural banks to opportunities to access foreign investment and attract capital from the Ghana Alternative Market (GAX).

The non-profit initiative was sponsored by the Norwegian Microfinance Initiative (NMA).

The Goodwell West Africa Microfinance Development Company is partnering JCS Investments Limited to invest in promising rural banks in Ghana.

The rural banks can attract foreign investment in equity not exceeding 20 percent.

Mr. Amanfu observed the prospects for rural banks are bright but challenging in the current competitive environment.

“The recent increase in the capital of RCBs to Gh₵300,000 should be your target. Strive towards higher level, as banks with greater capital have the ability to withstand shocks,” he admonished.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Rural banks in Ashanti engaged to access foreign investments

Rural and community banks in the Ashanti region have an opportunity to attract foreign investments into their operations.

Dutch-based Goodwell Investments, in partnership with JCS Investments Limited has introduced a $50million Goodwell West Africa Microfinance Fund. The wholesale microfinance equity fund has a one-third allocation to Ghana.

The Nwabiagya Rural Bank in 2011 attracted a one million dollar equity share investment for a period of sixty months from the Fund.

A seminar in Kumasi highlighted the value of rural bank shares as an attractive asset class.

Managing Director of JCS Investments, Patricia Sarfo says promising rural banks can attract quality investments.

There are also opportunities for rural banks to attract capital from the Ghana Alternative Market (GAX), a scheme introduced by the Ghana Stock Exchange to ease listing of SMEs on the stock market.

Financial institutions are barred from holding shares in rural banks under the country’s banking regulation, whilst foreign investments in equity should not be more than 20 percent.

According to Raymond Amanfu, a Director at the Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Ghana, foreign businesses, other than individuals, can invest in rural banks after satisfying existing regulations.

JCS Investments Limited has been working with Bank of Ghana to modify the laws to enable foreign institutional investors invest in the rural banking sector. 

Ms Sarfo Armah says the local investors should also be interested in tapping into opportunities of buying shares in rural banks.

Board Chairman of Nwabiagya Rural Bank, Nana Owusu Sarfo Anwona II has urged rural banks to upgrade their operations in order to attract foreign investors.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Journalists in Africa get guidebook on Climate Change reporting

Journalists in Africa have been introduced to a guidebook to direct them in accurate reporting of climate change issues.

The 91-page guidebook will direct journalists to better inform people to understand the changing climate and the need to protect and restore the rapid deterioration of the environment.

It was prepared by UNESCO, in collaboration with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Internews/Earth Journalism Network.

UN Special Envoy on Climate Change and former Ghanaian President, John Agyekum Kufuor, who launched the guidebook in Accra, Ghana, described climate change as “global thief” which is threatening human lives.

“I represent the political face that will mobilise political heads of state to tackle climate change and come out with appropriate mitigation and adoptable measures,” he stated.

According to him, the climate change phenomenon has become an issue of survival, which no nation could escape from.

Mr. Kuffour has asked countries to start afforestation programmes to help absorb carbon dioxide that is destroying the ozone layer.

The former President identified the media as having a critical role to play in helping people see that the world is under attack.

The guidebook is expected to improve climate change coverage targeting journalists, editors, teachers and media trainers.

Ms Moji Okuribido, Officer in-Charge of UNESCO in Accra, observed that inspite of the adverse impact of climate change on African countries, there is evidence that the phenomenon is not adequately covered by African journalists.

She is however hopeful the introduction of the guidebook would empower the media to pay more attention to climate change issues.

President John Dramani Mahama believes climate change must be seen as a developmental issue and not an environmental problem due to it impacts in all aspect of social lives.

According to him, Ghana is collaborating with various development partners such as Japan to integrate climate change mitigation into various sectors through training of stakeholders.

Officials of the meteorological agency are also being trained to be able to provide early warning signals of rains to enable people to prepare adequately.
Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Stakeholders recommend solution to challenges in Ghana’s citrus industry

An immediate intervention by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture could avert the total collapse of the citrus industry in Ghana.

This is the concern of stakeholders in the industry who gathered at Mankranso in Ashanti Region for a workshop on the constraints in citrus production and marketing.

Considering that most of producers are small-scale farmers who lack the capacity financially to solve the problems facing the industry and the urgency of solution to the pests and disease, especially the Angular Leaf Spot disease, the following have been recommended:

MINISTRY OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

·         To earmark a budget that will support the citrus industry as it is done with cocoa;

·         Consider the citrus among priority crops so as to get funds from the ministry and donors as well;

·         Help citrus producers access credit facilities;

·         Strengthen the capacity of Extension Staff to handle such situations; training in citrus related courses;

·         To make resources available for research into citrus production and marketing.

PARLIAMENT

·         The following constraints were identified in the citrus industry; lack of disease-free planting material, incidence of insect pest and diseases, lack of access to international markets and inadequate processing facilities, poor harvesting and post-harvest handling practices.

·         The sub-committee of food and agriculture should regularly visit farmers so as to have first-hand information about the real problems faced by citrus producers and other stakeholders;

·         To encourage the MOFA to mainstream the citrus industry policies

FARMERS

·         To work closely with Extension, research in clean seeds/seedlings, good practices and other technologies to improve their production and therefore their income.

·         To come together and form strong farmer associations in all districts where citrus is produced in Ghana.

·         To consider citrus as business and prepare to invest in it.

RESEARCHERS

·         Should interact constantly with farmers and involve them in citrus research from planning to implementation;

·         To assist in the creation of innovation platform involving all stakeholders in the citrus value chain.

·         To provide clean planting materials and resistant and high yield varieties;

·         To conduct studies showing the profitability of the commodity, the competitiveness of citrus production in Ghana and the potential of Ghana in citrus production.

FARA, CABI AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

·         To assist in the creation of the innovation platforms that will help to improve the citrus industry;

·         To advocate for more external funding.

Ghanaian farmers crying over dying citrus plantations

Citrus farming has the potential to become a major source of income contributor to the Ghanaian economy as the country explores alternatives to over-reliance on cocoa.

Compared to other African economies, Ghana has competitive advantage in citrus exports to Europe.

But Ghanaian citrus farmers are in dilemma as they are gradually losing their livelihood to pests and diseases.

Seventy-two year old Afia Achiaa went into citrus production 20 years ago. Like many others at Mankranso in the Ahafo Ano South District of the Ashanti Region, the venture is a main source of income.

But Afia and her family’s plantation is severely devastated by high fruit drop due to disease attack.

“I enjoyed the high orange yield in times past but now I’m in dire financial difficulty because of the premature ripe and drops of the fruits,” she complained.

The Citrus Angular Leaf Spot disease is said to be spreading at an alarming rate in Ghana – crop yield loss is at a 50 percent minimum.

This is a constraint to citrus production as posited by Ofori Amanfo Dacosta, Chairman of the Citrus Producers Association.

“We are finding it difficult to pay for our children’s school fees and controlling the farm is a big challenge; we spend a lot of money to spray the farm but at the end of it we don’t get anything to pay for the cost of maintenance,” he said.

The air-borne disease started spreading from the Central Region about seven years ago, and it is taking over farms like bushfire in other regions.

 

Livelihoods, employment opportunities and potential foreign exchange earnings are eluding individual farmers, communities and the nation.

“Most Scandinavian countries want to buy our citrus because the quality is good but because some of these pests and diseases are not quarantined, we cannot export,” observed Dr. Francis Collison Brentu at the University of Ghana’s Forest and Horticulture Crops Research Centre.

The citrus sub-sector of Ghana’s agricultural industry has the potential to create an estimated one million jobs in Ghana.

Seth Ayihi’s Pinora Limited, which processes fruit juice for export, is currently producing about 40 percent below capacity due to challenges in accessing raw materials.

Pests, diseases and climate change remain a bane to the citrus value chain, he said, raising fears of potential job losses at the processing end of citrus production.

Seth says intervention for farmers must be immediate and national in order to achieve the desired results.

“Ideally we need a national concerted effort from all stakeholders, backed by policy from the government to tackle some of these diseases so that we can have foreign exchange from the citrus in addition to cocoa,” stated Dr. Brentu.

The Platform for African-European Partnership on Agricultural Research for Development (PAEPARD) is seeking innovative ways to control the angular leaf spot of citrus disease.

Prof. Wale Adekunle of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) says the challenge can be addressed within a season if interest groups come together under a national platform.

“What FARA has worked on in the last 12years is to develop an approach to solve this kind of problem and we call it ‘the Development of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development’ in which place all the stakeholders work together to determine the research and development agenda,” he said.

Ghana’s parliament has an oversight responsibility for various state ministries.

Francis Kojo Ackah, a ranking member of the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee of Parliament, says access to information is critical.

“We are now getting to know that this disease if not controlled can destroy the whole citrus production in this country; so seriously we are going to address this issue so that we curb the menace as quickly as possible,” he assured.

 

Citrus Producers’ Chairman, Mr. Amanfo Dacosta, is calling for mass spraying of citrus farms as part of a holistic solution to the challenge.

Other challenges to address include low soil fertility, lack of disease-free planting material, poor harvesting and post-harvest handling as well as lack of market access.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

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Ghana Climate Change Coalition commits to boost environmentalism

Anita Plummer, a Professor at the International Affairs Centre of Spelman College in the US has stated that “our environment where we live, where we work, play, pray and study – is our responsibility and what we do today is not only impacting our future – it is impacting the here and now.”

New environmental challenges starring in the face of Ghana include climate change, sanitation and waste management, chemical use and misuse, illegal mining and the impacts of oil discovery and electronic waste.

Climate change, most especially, has the potential to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, prolong and create new poverty traps.

In 2013, Ghana’s government approved two policies to improve the management of the nation’s environment – the “Ghana Environment Policy” and the “National Climate Change Policy for Ghana”, expected to be launched later in the year.

Both documents seek to address challenges in effectively managing the environmental concerns. The new environment policy, for instance, hinges on integrated and holistic environmental management practices and processes over the next ten years, whilst the second policy clearly outlines the effects of climate change in Ghana.

 

Effective policy implementation however requires adequate public participation in environmental governance, to ensure government commits to promote environmental management and enforce people’s environmental rights.

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) is a continental coalition of Civil Society Organizations with a common goal of promoting and advocating for pro-poor, climate-friendly and equity-based responses to climate change.

The Ghana Climate Change Coalition (GCCC) has been launched as the local chapter of PACJA to promote the agenda of climate justice and sustainable development.

Environment experts at the launch of the GCCC reiterated the need for government to come up with pragmatic policies and measures to mitigate the rising temperature in the country.

They observed the increased temperature has reduced farm yields in the ecological zones and forced herdsmen to migrate with their cattle to other places. 

Professor Chris Gordon, the Director of the Environment and Sanitation Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, noted that studies conducted, using historical data between 1960 and 2000, show that all the agro-ecological zones in Ghana are getting warmer and drying up.

The GCCC therefore has set itself the goal to be an effective Ghanaian CSO’s platform to share information, strategize jointly, coordinate engagement with key stakeholders and jointly advocate for environmental sustainability in development of programs and initiatives.

Acting Coordinator of PACJA-Ghana, MacDonald Bubuama, has urged the government to strictly enforce its policy measures, including prosecution, and radical approach in combating the menace of environmental degradation.

He said the fight for climate justice requires the dedicated collaborative efforts of all key players including local communities, national government, the private sector and CSO’s.

It is expected the Coalition will live up to its vision of promoting a national environmental free from climate change and sustainable development, equity and justice for all persons.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

African plants crying over impacts of climate change

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has, for the past 18 months, engaged indigenous forest communities on an initiative aimed at creating an enabling environment for effective uptake of forest conservation in three African countries.

In the face of the devastating impacts of climate change on African rural communities, forest dwellers and indigenous people, the capacity building project for African civil society and indigenous communities in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

Community representatives, at the training session in Narok, Kenya, shared stories on the impact of climate change in their locality. “The rain is running away even from our vegetables,” said Titus Sururu, an elderly man who observed the alarming rate at which his community is being impacted by climate change over the years.

“Nowadays, the rain chooses where it falls, it does not rain on our farms but on trees in the forest,” stated John Nkuito, another community representative.

The two week training held in the Mau Forest region is part of a series to provide valuable pool of forest ecosystem knowledge on the national and cultural landscape. This should guide trade-offs and critical land use, provide local and indigenous communities with capacity to measure and monitor carbon stocks within private, public and communal landscapes among others.

In ensuring gender issues are mainstreamed in the project, PACJA held sessions on engendering the management of the forest ecosystem, taking into consideration in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The participant underscored the urgent need to conserve the forest and derive all the benefits that come with the practice.

The Community Chief, Samson Kahare lauded PACJA’s efforts in amplifying the voice of the voiceless and going ahead implement practical projects that have direct benefit to the people at the grassroots.

Samson Ogallah, Programme Manager at PACJA called on the participants to put into practice all what they learnt from the training.

“PACJA will not relent in its effort in advocating for pro poor and people centred policy that will address the challenges of Climate Change in Africa and its impacts on the people especially the indigenous people and communities,” he added.