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Women in Kanshegu village gain economic independence by raising goats
The group was founded with support from the IFAD-funded Smallholder Rehabilitation and Development Programme that ran from 1986 to 1995 and pioneered the concept of women extension volunteers. In an effort to support the breeding of small ruminants in the area, programme staff met with Alimatou and the other group members to discuss how livestock activities could help to improve their incomes. “For us, it was a very strange idea because raising livestock was a task that is generally reserved for men,” says Alimatou. “What really motivated us is when project staff explained how livestock production could increase our incomes and help us become economically independent.”
“Our goat-and-sheep business has helped women in Kanshegu have better living conditions,” says Alimatou. “The money I make from these activities allow me to buy food and clothes and pay for medicines and school fees for my children.” News of the Kanshegu women’s group’s achievements quickly spread across the region. The programme received numerous requests for support from other women’s groups in the region and eventually sponsored 39 groups in the Savelugu/Nanton district. As the number of livestock increased, members of the various groups started establishing their own individual sheds or pens. In Kanshegu, seven such pens exist today. Women in Kanshegu and elsewhere have also had the opportunity to share their knowledge outside the district by participating in a Ministry of Agriculture field school programme. Despite the programme’s closure in 1995, the women in Kanshegu and other communities continue to carry on their activities, seven years later. In Kanshegu, the group is now working to become registered as a cooperative society. The success that Alimatou and other women in northern Ghana have experienced has inspired other development programmes to adopt similar small ruminant components in their design. Source: IFAD |
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Alimatou Mahama, 40, lives in Kanshegu, a small village in the district of Savelugu/Nanton in the northern region of Ghana, with her husband and nine children. In 1994, Alimatou helped to create the Kanshegu women’s group with nine other women in the village to explore ways to improve their livelihoods and lift themselves out of extreme poverty. 
On a pilot basis, the ten women began raising 21 ewes and two rams. Later, the group included goat-raising at their own expense.
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