Female students and tutors of the six Colleges of Agriculture in the country are set to benefit from some skills and training to establish their own agricultural businesses.
This is part of a global community service project by the Technical Education Development for Modernizing Agriculture in Ghana (TEDMAG) with support from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, MOFA, University of Ghana and the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Speaking to Starr News at the sidelines of a one-day Global Community Service Stakeholder Consultation Workshop Principal Investigator, TEDMAG and Co-lead Global Community Service Project, Professor Mary Buhr of the University of Saskatchewan says the project is to equip Ghanaian student particular females to set up their businesses.
“This project is all about the student and aiding Ghana’s agriculture so that the students can create their own career in Ghanaian agriculture. We want them to have the skills and confidence to own their own businesses,” she said
“In particular with the global community service project, we are focusing on young women and trying to enhance general enrollment in the colleges of education”, she added.
Tutor at Damongo Agricultural College and Head of Department for the Agribusiness department of the school, Mary Budu is optimistic the project would provide students with the requisite skills to make them self-sufficient in their agric journey.
“Initially over a decade our curriculum was basically on production with nothing related to entrepreneurship and agribusiness. This intervention brought a new curriculum which contained mostly agribusiness courses and exposed the students to entrepreneurial skills which they need”, she said.
Meanwhile, Gender Specialist at the Technical Education Development for Modernizing Agriculture in Ghana (TEDMAG), Aba Amissah Quainoo is pushing for introduction of incentives in the educational sectors to make agriculture attractive to all. According to her there is a need for a perception change in the country to reap fully the benefits of the sector.
The Global Community Service Project, co-funded by TEDMAG, is an initiative for “Women Entrepreneurship: Capacity Building for Female Entrepreneurs from the Agricultural Colleges in Ghana”, promoting female empowerment is being piloted at Damongo Agricultural College and Ejura Agricultural College & Mechanization Centre and is expected to be extended to all six colleges of education.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
