Alima Fuseini and her teenage daughter Mariam Fuseini are members of the Bobgu-Nye Yaa #cooperative in the Binduli rural community in Karaga, a district in the northern region of Ghana. During the farming season 2024, Alima Fuseini productively used the techniques learned in the #GAP capacity-building workshops conducted by the Wuntira Foundation during the 2024 farming season. Alima Fuseini is an okra farmer, and every year, she grows okra only during the rainy season to feed her household of eleven members. Apart from farming, Alima has no #vocational or productive skills to use to create other sustainable income sources.

As a result, Alima’s joblessness during the winter season annually imposes perpetual poverty and hunger on the household.

Alima’s story is similar to that of about 99% of the current eight farmer cooperative members the Wuntira Foundation manages, which collectively consist of about 3,012 farmers.

Nonetheless, these poverty gaps can be bridged as follows:

Provide irrigation systems and farm inputs in these rural communities to encourage all-year-round farming and continue cultivating food for commercial and domestic purposes.

Provide capacity-building workshops in vocational and technical job training skills to create agroecological and other job opportunities and enable diverse income sources for rural folks, especially women and youth.

Establish integrated community farms to enhance the employment of teenage youth and people with disabilities (PWDs). These farms will produce highly nutritious and commercial vegetables to sell for revenue generation and scalability, hence creating job opportunities among rural youth and PWDs.

The three above and other practical measures can be used to mitigate the repercussions of drought and other, effects of climate change and adapt to enhance food security, alleviate hunger, and improve the rural livelihoods that anchor our food security.