Gender-based participation in income generating activities in cocoa growing communities. The role of youth training programs

Abstract

Despite an impressive growth of Ghana's economy over the decades, it has been branded as 'jobless growth' manifested in growing unemployment among the youth. This growing unemployment rate is gender biased against women, with the United Nations expecting this to worsen globally over time. This study examines the determinants of gender-based participation of the youth in income generating enterprises in cocoa growing areas in Ghana, using a sample of 4,702 participants of the Next Generation Cocoa Youth Program (MASO) initiative. This data were obtained by Solidaridad West Africa. The sample was obtained through the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique to compare the characteristics of the male and female groups and remove missing observations. The multinomial regression model supported with descriptive analysis were employed for the estimation. It was found that most of those who participated (63%) in the training program were engaged in an income generating activity. Youth engagement in cocoa (9%) as compared with non-cocoa (28%) and joint enterprise (26%) is very low. Given the same level of exposure (MASO), women are more likely to be unemployed, less likely to engage in cocoa production and more likely to be engaged in non-cocoa enterprises. All non-cocoa business enterprises are dominated by men except petty trading and agro processing. Age, marital status, education, savings, additional training, migrant status and gender, influenced engagements in the various categories of enterprises. The study recommends rolling out other policies that can address challenges of women engagement in cocoa farming in addition to the training program. Policies towards encouraging savings among the youth is recommended to aid in startup businesses, which may be supported by low interest loans. Attention should be given to the non-cocoa sector in terms of employment as people are either losing interest in cocoa farming or diversifying their incomes to non-cocoa businesses.

Climate change and adaptation strategies in rural Ghana: a study on smallholder farmers in the Mamprugu-Moaduri district

“…A total number of 104 respondents, representing about 69.3% of males, were mostly engaged in crop farming more than their female counterparts from the population in the northern region. This finding is consistent with the findings of Abukari et al (2022) who report that the proportion of males engaged in agriculture is higher than females. In addition, the influence of marital status on the adoption of specific farming activities was also evident as about 64% of the respondents who were married were mostly engaged in crop farming to provide for their partners and family.…”

Developing Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurship in Latin America and the Caribbean

“…Our findings are aligned with previous entrepreneurship competency studies [16][17][18]20,65,66]. Ambitious, growth mindset, organized, and persuasive had lower consensus agreement (75%) than did other abilities/characteristics.…”

“…Several agricultural entrepreneurship programs include business and technical agricultural skills [16][17][18]67,68]. Such skills are usually taught as a part of a holistic training program for youth and adults.…”

“…Agricultural entrepreneurship programs include soft, technical, and business skills training [16][17][18][19][20]. Soft skills include self-efficacy, networking, persuasion, leadership, creative problem-solving, mindfulness, and creativity [20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…Technical skills usually include agricultural production, value-added production, and agritourism [17,19,25]. Business skills training varies but includes marketing, business strategy, business development, management, accounting, risk management, and ethics [16,19,[26][27][28][29]. These variations show a lack of cohesiveness in the core areas needed for agricultural entrepreneurship, although we recognize that such programs need to be customized to individual communities.…”