Annual Report: January-December: 2019

Executive Summary

This report captures key activities carried out and results achieved by the Foundation for Community Empowerment Programme (FOCEP) ranging from the period of January to December 2019. The report summaries key activities and results achieved during the period under review.

Background: This programme was organised in line the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund which is aimed at building capacities and empowering smallholder farmers through improved agricultural productivity and production.

Objectives: Building the capacities of farmers in farming as a business (FAAB)

Beneficiaries: The beneficiaries are 30 members of a farmer-based organisation in Builsa North District

Duration of training: 5-day training in the following topics — farming as a business (FAAB); agricultural value chain and innovation; recordkeeping; facilitating access to markets and finance; best agronomic practices; etc.

Methodology: The training adapts AFARD’s (Agency for Accelerated Regional Development) Participatory Mutual Training and Learning Approach (PMTLA). The PMTLA approach enables the participants to learn from each other. The approach is based on three principles: reflection and sharing; generating new knowledge; and motivating innovation and creativity.

INTRODUCTION

Over the years, the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund aimed building capacities and empowering smallholder farmers through improved agricultural productivity and production. This has mainly been done through training in critical areas to facilitate access to markets. For projects of this nature to thrive, it has been argued that smallholder farmers need to become more entrepreneurial in their approach to farming. This means that they have to produce for the market and for profit. However, becoming more entrepreneurial can be difficult for smallholder farmers unless they get support in the form of capacity building based on their felt needs.

It is in this context that the Foundation for Community Empowerment Programme (FOCEP) through the support of the BUSAC Fund, is conducting a training needs assessment (TNA) to uncover the challenges and needs of selected smallholder farmers in the Builsa North to enable the design of a training package that will equip the smallholder farmers with the necessary skills and attitudes for running farm enterprises on basic business principles to enhance business development and sustainability.

Expected results

• Improved knowledge of 30 out growers (FBOs) in Builsa in Farming as a Business
• 30 Smallholder farmers or out growers equipped with knowledge and skills in basic record keeping through basic numeracy training.
• Improved knowledge and skills of FBOs or out growers’ in simple accounting principles to appreciate cost-benefit-analysis.
• Capacities of smallholder farmers or out growers built in the principles of value addition for enhanced agri-business.
• Knowledge of FBOs or out growers enhanced in market linkages and market information
• Capacity of FBOs in accessing credit from financial institutions and other sources built

Training content

To achieve the objectives and expected outputs of the training the following topics were treated:

• Agriculture as a business to re-orient smallholder farmers’ mind-set
• Agribusiness innovation and value chain development
• Simple recordkeeping on farm activities
• Accounting principles on cost-benefit analysis
• Sound agronomic practices
• Facilitating market and finance access
• Contracts and procurement

• Background of PSO trained

Foundation for Community Empowerment Programme (FOCEP) is a farmer based organization in the Builsa North District of the Upper East Region of Ghana. The group was formed and registered with the Registrar-General Department in 2017, currently with a staff strength of 12, comprising of 2 females and 10 males.

2. Pre-training preparations
   • Grantees to be trained/Venue Selection;

The key beneficiaries of this action are smallholder farmers, and the plan is to reach out to 30 of these farmers who are already operating in a group well organized and best suited for this training action.

Two places came up for consideration as the venue to be used for the training; six participants chose Faith and Hope Guest House with the reason that it is closer, however the remaining twenty-four insisted that it should be done at Graceland Hotel, explaining that the Faith and Hope guest House has no canteen, only five rooms, so it will be difficult them to start preparing for them. Finally a conclusion was reached that Graceland is the ideal venue for the training.

• Training content/logistics;

The following is the content and logistics approved after the training needs assessment was conducted;

• Training methodology/Training duration;

Methodology

The training adapts AFARD’s (Agency for Accelerated Regional Development) Participatory Mutual Training and Learning Approach (PMTLA). The PMTLA is a group process that facilitates training and learning among adults. The participants learn by doing and through sharing their knowledge and experiences. The process involves the participation of people with common interest and purpose. There are no instructors or teachers, but only facilitators. The participants mainly learn from each other. The learning moves from the known to the unknown, from the easy to the difficult and from the simple to complex. The PMTLA approach enables the participants to learn from each other. The approach is based on three principles:

Reflection and sharing: The participants in the training reflect on the topic, share experience, knowledge and understanding on the subject. It begins with what the participants know.

Generating new knowledge: Here new knowledge is created based on existing capacity and exchanges plus new concepts derived from the training manual.

Motivating innovation and creativity: The new knowledge and insights help the participants to innovate, to develop new ideas from old ones and to create completely new ideas.

The PMTLA entails learning techniques such as:

• Questioning and exploration: To allow participants and facilitators share different perspectives and viewpoints on issues.
• Brainstorming: Used in collecting as many ideas as possible from the workshop participants on a specific topic within a given time, in an uninhibited way.
• Group discussion: Participants are divided into smaller groups of three to six people for a discussion on given question or to complete a task.
• Buzz groups: Participants are made to form pairs or threes to quickly discuss (buzz) some aspect of a topic under discussion.
• Case studies: Real cases or designed hypothetical situations used to stimulate participants’ critical faculties by presenting successes and failures of given cases
• Games, quizzes and energizers: Used for breaking up monotony, raising energy levels and letting people enjoy themselves

The workshop lasted for five days

3. Training Delivery
   • Opening ceremony;

The opening ceremony started at about 9:35am with an opening prayer said by Azongbiik Agetiba. The managing Director for FOCEP, Mr. Maxwell Akandem welcomes everybody to the program and entreated participants to pay attention to the trainer, considering how important event is them as a group. He informed the participants that they should be free and open and share their ideas to the development of the group

He thanked the BUSAC Fund and its donor partners for supporting the training. He also added that Mr. Vincent Subbey the monitor from BUSAC Fund will be joining them any moment from now. Later in the day Mr. Vincent joined us and was given some time to interact with the trainees. He first all congratulated them for have been selected to be part of the training, he mention that BUSAC Fund is bent strengthening PSOs in  the economy to chart course for Ghana’s development and will continue to collaborate with vibrant and act FBOs and civil society organizations like Foundation for Community Empowerment Programme [FOCEP] to train farmers

4. Participation;

Training facilitation was done in the local dialect to allow all participants to contribute to the discussions and for easy understanding of concepts and ideas. Participants expressed themselves freely in the local dialect and finding examples easily around them to back their explanations.

It became more participatory especially when they were always put in groups to discussion issues among themselves and share with other group members.

5. Training objectives

• To provide training for farmer-based organisations (FBOs) or out growers to take farming as a business (commercialization of agriculture) in the Builsa North.
• To build capacities of smallholder farmers or out growers in basic record keeping through basic numeracy training.
• To train FBOs or out growers in simple accounting principles to ascertain cost-benefit-analysis.
• To provide capacity building training for smallholder farmers or out growers on the principles of value addition to their produce to enhance agri-business.
• To facilitate linkage of FBOs or out growers to potential markets
• To build capacity of FBOs to enable them have access to credit from financial institutions and other sources

1. The BUSAC Fund and its mandates;

The Business Sector Advocacy Challenge is a non-governmental agency supported by donor agencies like DANIDA, USAID and the EU, working to strengthen Private Sector Organizations in Ghana. The agency is set up to provide financial support to various groups and organizations to carry out advocacy, capacity building and trainings meant to cause major policy changes in the private enterprise sector and the economic development path of Ghana.

Between 2004 and 2010, the Fund provided a total of 362 advocacy grants to various business groups and associations within the ten regions of Ghana which formed part of the phase I activities of the agency. The second phase of the BUSAC Fund was a five-year extension to BUSAC Fund I and was intended to consolidate the gains made in BUSAC Fund I and to further spread the concept of advocacy to all sectors of the economy in all the regions of Ghana. This phase run from March 2010 to February, 2016 and had provided a total of 435 advocacy grants to various PSOs across the ten regions of Ghana amounting 17.6 million US dollars.

The third and current phase of the Fund (phase III) meant to further strengthen the business environment and facilitate private sector growth is a buildup on the experiences of phases I and II. In this current phase BUSAC Fund intends to build long term sustainable of PSOs who will have nationwide membership so that they will continue with structured and evidence-based business advocacy in the absent of BUSAC Fund. This third phase of the fund being implemented from July 2016 to December 2020, special attention is given to legal and rights based challenges within the broader range of sustainable agriculture and energy as well as the facilitation of private-public sector policy dialogue to help improve the Ghanaian business environment.

2. The role of BUSAC monitors

 The monitor plays the role of the secretariat at the regional level since the national secretariat cannot be everywhere. They directly monitor the activities of the various PSOs and FBOs that are contracted to perform certain duties at the community level. S/he monitors the activities of the various grantees to ensure;

• Prudent financial management
• Activity schedules are follow
• Inspection of field activities
• Coordination/evaluation
• Quality control

3. Step by step account on each training module

The presentation was categories based on the three modules namely introducing the concept of Agriculture as a business, Technical Capacity Development (Agri-business Innovations and Value Addition Development and Enterprise Development as module 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

In Module one which talks about concept of Agriculture as a business, participants were taken through topics like Subsistence farming versus farming as a business, Key drivers to farming as a Business, Benefits of farming as a business, Profitability Analysis, Demand pooling and business development, Decision making and communication, Conflict management and Credit management,

The second module talks about Technical Capacity Development

(Agri-business Innovations and Value Addition Development. Participants were taken through topics like Marketing management, Organize training on value addition on the following commodities: maize, rice, groundnuts and soya beans, organize training on processing, packaging and distribution networks and outlets, Regulatory issues on agro-chemicals and Agricultural value chain

The third and final module is enterprise development; in this module are issue on Understanding Entrepreneurship

4. Workshop evaluation:

Figure 1: Workshop Evaluation

Aspects of the workshop evaluated  are;

1. Overall workshop achievement
2. Workshop expectations
3. Training content
4. Training objectives
5. Facilitation/facilitator
6. Conference arrangements
7. Accommodation and meals respectively

5. Closing ceremony;

The five days training came to the end at 3:55 pm. First on the agenda for the closing ceremony was for participants to evaluate the workshop, which was done with ease through the assistance of the manager Mr. Solomon Akanpisi. The Managing Director of FOCEP, Mr. Maxwell Akandem, thanked the participants for taking their time off other duties and availing themselves for this training. He encouraged them not to put away the knowledge and skills learned and that they should endeavor to share it with their colleague farmers. Mr.  Akandem reminded the members to pay their dues promptly to allow the group to be able to organize more of such trainings.

To their sponsors, the BUSAC Fund and its donor partners, he was grateful and said they would like to continue to partner with them to ensure that there was a strong business environment for the Private Sector Business development in Ghana. He encouraged other FBOs in the district to take advantage of the BUSAC Fund to develop the capacities of their members. He thanked the trainer and said they continue to collaborate with me to ensure that the capacity gaps of their members are identify and fill to enhance the group development.

6. Lessons learnt;

It was realized that using the local language in most of the presentations allowed for more of the participants contribute to the discussion more time. The animation in the power point presentation kept participants glued forward and paying attention.

We also realized it is difficult for the adult-learner be kept in one position for more than an hour and so was good to always group them at some points to discuss among themselves. The venue also looks too formal for most of them.

7. Conclusions and Recommendations.

At the end of the workshop we conclude that capacity is like salt that gives taste to a cooked food the eater enjoys the food and gets energy to tackle issues and it is seen as a continuous process and not a onetime event, since the business environment keep changing. Also we concluded that the smallholder farmers need continuous guidance and assistance to be able grow their small farming businesses in the face of strong competitions.

In my recommendation therefore I will encourage all stakeholders to make capacity building a continuous process for all FBOs.

8. Appendixes
   • List of participants

• Training program by days;

• Evaluation forms.

Facilitating sustainable agri-business development and market access linkages, Training Workshop

Graceland Hotel Navrongo from 30^th October to 2nd November, 2018

EVALUATION FORM

• Training in Pictures;

CONCLUSION

We are grateful to God for the divine guidance and protection bestowed upon us all throughout the year. We are equally grateful to all our strategic partners for their cooperation and collaboration which has contributed in achieving the positive results within the year.

The project implementation team also appreciates the financial and technical assistance of our donor partners which has facilitated in the smooth implementation of project activities.