Story By: Ishmael Barfi
Oxfam Ghana has commended the achievements of the Women’s Economic Advancement for Collective Transformation (WEACT) project, a five-year initiative that has tackled structural and systemic barriers to women’s economic empowerment in Ghana.
The project, funded by the Government of Canada promoted legal literacy, gender-responsive entrepreneurship, and improved land access for women, benefiting over 5,400 women and girls directly and 3,510 men and boys.
Key achievements of the project include the training of 126 legal literacy volunteers, who reached 15,000 community members with crucial information on women’s rights, inheritance laws, family law, and child protection.
The project also enrolled over 550 couples in the Gender Model Family initiative, reducing women’s unpaid care work and increasing girls’ study time by nearly 30 hours per week.
In addition, 900 women were trained in gender-responsive entrepreneurship, resulting in increased productivity and higher profit margins. Women now occupy over 40% of leadership roles in cooperatives, with 30% of cooperatives implementing gender-inclusive policies.
Land ownership for women increased significantly, rising from 25% to 49% in project communities. The Land Social Lab initiative secured land for women in agricultural value chains, offering long-term economic benefits.
Speaking at the project’s closure event, held in Accra on 24th February 2025, Oxfam Ghana’s Country Director, Mohammed Anwar Sadat Adam, emphasized the need for sustained efforts to build on the project’s achievements.
He called on stakeholders to advocate for policies that protect and enhance women’s economic rights.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Flynn-Dapaah, Head of Cooperations at the Canadian High Commission, praised the project’s successes, including financial inclusion, which enabled women to access financial resources to grow their businesses.
Oxfam Ghana reaffirmed its commitment to gender equality and economic justice, stressing the importance of scaling up successful models to ensure the project’s impact remains sustainable.
The project’s closure event brought together representatives from government ministries, local assemblies, civil society organizations, and beneficiary communities, all of whom celebrated the project’s achievements and deliberated on strategies to sustain its outcomes in the years ahead.
Source: www.thenewindependentonline.com
