Africa 2000 Network (A2N), Ghana

Only 9% of the Greater Accra region’s population is engaged in agriculture. Despite the employment opportunities offered by the capital, however, the majority of people are self-employed, and significantly more women than men are engaged in individual production or enterprise. A2N was originally set up by the United Nations to address environmental issues at community level, bringing agricultural issues to the fore. It begins any project by working with community members to identify their assets and using this exploration to develop ideas about how assets can be boosted and the ‘leakage’ of any assets minimised. The process is driven from the bottom up, using group sessions (divided by gender to ensure women can participate) and pictorial mapping (as most community members are illiterate).

Two villages were visited for the fieldwork: Onyansana, a village on the outskirts of Accra, and Mamfe, a village in the more fertile interior of the Greater Accra Region.