By Suman Chakrabarti
For years, Janet Nbem husked peanuts, called groundnuts in Ghana, by hand. It was slow work, and the process limited what she could sell, no matter how early she started or how late she finished. That’s because the ceiling on her income was never set by her effort or her ability. It was a technical limitation and removing it changed what was possible.
Previously, the equipment required to scale Janet’s work and the financing to buy it was out of reach. In Bonbonayili, and in villages like it across the Northern, Savannah and Upper West regions, the market simply was not built to reach women like Janet.
I met Janet last spring, as part of my role to measure the financial and social impact of the Greater Rural Opportunities for Women 2 (GROW2) project as it nears its conclusion. For the past five years, GROW2 has sought to improve the economic and social empowerment of smallholder women farmers, entrepreneurs and agribusinesses in the Savannah, Upper West and Northern regions of Ghana.
Increasing Income and the Power To Purchase
Janet told me how one small, yet significant, change transformed her production process. Through a cost-share arrangement with the GROW2 project co-investment under the Innovation Fund, Janet acquired a mechanized peanut husking machine. She always had the skill and now she had the machine. It proved to be the key that unlocked market access.
Her output climbed, and so did her income. But it’s what she did with that income that changed things dramatically. She bought a second machine entirely with her own money. That machine now employs several women in her community, and Janet has begun diversifying into new lines of business, with her husking service reaching communities well beyond her own.
Shaping a Market That Values Women
Janet is not an isolated case. She is one of more than 50,000 women smallholder farmers, roughly 5,000 women micro entrepreneurs, and 61 small and medium enterprises, GROW2 has worked with over five years. Rather than deliver services directly, the project strengthened the market around them, putting advanced planters, motorized tricycles, and groundnut shellers within reach through an innovation fund that shared costs while farmers built the confidence to invest.
As demand grew, MEDA stepped down contribution by the project under the Innovation Fund from 50 to 40 percent, and women kept buying. As the project neared its close, GROW2 had helped create or strengthen more than 55,000 employment opportunities, and groundnut incomes had risen sharply from their baseline.
The same shift has impacts further along the value chain. Murijana Abubakari left a previous job to found Suglo Suhundoo Enterprise, a small facility making peanut oil, peanut butter and snacks. MEDA co-invested in her processing equipment and connected her to the very peanut growers it was already supporting, turning their harvest into her higher-value products. Her monthly sales revenue grew from about GH₵6,000 to GH₵55,000 ($726 to $6,655 CAD or $527 to $4,830 USD), and she is now working to reach markets in Accra and beyond.
MEDA’s work goes toward rebuilding the system so an enterprise, once unlocked, keeps thriving long after a project ends. That is what a business solution to poverty looks like on the ground in Northern Ghana: not a handout, but a husking machine, and a lasting confidence to invest in the future.
