AICCRA Facilitating Gender Smart Technologies Using Community Technology Parks

Climate change remains a major threat to Ghana’s agricultural productivity and food security especially in developing countries. One of the promising pathways to achieving sustainable food production is building communities resilience to climate risk through technology parks which can serve as platforms to promote climate-smart agricultural technologies. Thirty-one (31) technology parks were established across twenty-two (22) communities in five AICCRA intervention regions to promote different gender-smart CSA technologies to aid sustainable production of yam, sweet potato, maize, and cowpea. The value chains piloted were maize (13 parks), yam (3 parks), cowpea (13 parks), and sweet potato (2 parks). For each technology park, the community selected and compared the validated CSA practices with the conventional practices. Farmer field schools (FFS) organized across the localities brought together a total of 2,341 farmers, extension officers, and other stakeholders directly of which 1155 representing 49.0 % were women. Again 988 representing 42.0% were below the age of 35 years. On average, improved maize seeds, land preparation, good agronomic practices, harvesting, and marketing technologies disseminated were scored as having low drudgery (60 %) and displacement of women of their roles (90 %) for maize, cowpea, and sweet potato. Compared to the national yield average, AICCRA intervention fields recorded 64 % and 128 % increases in maize and cowpea yields respectively. Again, the AICCRA intervention field recorded 65 % and 118 % more income than farmer practice. While average yam tuber yield from AICCRA fields was about 40 % higher than FP fields, sweet potato weevil-damaged tubers were more than 200 % on FP fields compared to AICCRA intervention fields. In all the intervening communities, farmers ranked bundled CSA technologies as the most preferred technologies to help reduce the impact of climate risks. Two hundred and seventy-four are using AICCRA technologies with 42% being female. AICCRA interventions have shown a high potential for improved yield and income this has important implications for climate policy in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Ghana.