MASO is a five year programme, focused on creating employment opportunities for the youth (aged 18-25) in Ghana’s cocoa communities.
At 16, she was pregnant and dropped out of middle school. At 17, she became a single mother of twins and had no income, living with her extended family. Today, at 22, Linda Afedzi is a cocoa farmer with ambitions to save enough money to return to school to study medicine. Linda’s life has really taken quite a turn, thanks to a Mastercard Foundation supported program, MASO, unfolding in the rural villages of Ghana.
“Before MASO came to this community, I was unemployed like so many others. Now, I am the owner of a cocoa farm through the help of the MASO program.” Linda Afedzi
Linda comes from the village of Liate Wote in the Volta Region of Ghana. Until wide ranging bush fires destroyed their farms some years ago, Liate Wote was a major cocoa and coffee producing center. Today it survives mostly by serving the tourists who visit nearby Afadjato, Ghana’s highest peak, and Tagbo Falls.
Linda’s mother is a trader and has a small maize farm. Her father is a carpenter. Most of the village youth, whether they completed high school or dropped out, are unemployed and have little to do.
“Before Solidaridad came to this community, we had no jobs and no training. We had nothing meaningful to do since we left school. Some of my mates who travelled to the major cities have returned because the situation is almost the same there.”
The MASO program came to Liate Wote in 2016 and Linda enrolled to be trained as a professional cocoa farmer. “I did not know anything about cocoa farming. After joining the program, I have learnt so much about budgeting, child labor, planting, and other good practices on the farm.” MASO (the name means to lift or raise up in Twi, the language of the Ashanti region), implemented by a Solidaridad-led consortium funded by the Mastercard Foundation, is designed to solve two problems; help rehabilitate the cocoa industry and provide meaningful opportunities for unemployed youth.
The cocoa industry in Ghana is facing challenges. Farmers are aging; their productivity is low, as are their incomes. Their children are not interested in becoming cocoa farmers if it means living a subsistence level existence. So few farmers are making the necessary investments in new cocoa trees, better farming practices etc. At the same time, in the same villages, villages just like Liate Wote, large numbers of youth are unemployed, with few opportunities in sight. MASO is showing these youth that cocoa farming
if operated as a business, can provide an adequate livelihood and a fulfilling life. The yearlong program provides training in basic life skills, financial skills, good agricultural practices, and business skills. It links them to financial services including bank accounts, banking cards and, eventually, to credit. Through its alumni program, it ensures continuing education and peer learning. Recognizing the special challenges for young women like Linda, MASO also offers daycare facilities near many of the training sites. While most training programs are mixed, a few offer opportunities to undertake training in an all-female setting.
So far, MASO has established cocoa training programs in more than 100 villages across 5 cocoa growing regions of the country. More than 2,000 youth completed the program in its first year and a second cohort of 2,500 is roughly half way through its training. An additional 2-3,000 will follow each year. For those not inclined to become farmers, an entrepreneurial training program, enabling the youth to provide services to support the cocoa industry, has been set up in 28 additional villages.
This article is written by Sebastian Teunissen ,Managing Director – Solidaridad North Americ
