WUSC-ACTIVATE Project Empowers Over 200 Youth with Practical Agriculture Skills in Asante Mampong, Ghana

Introduction

In an important stride towards sustainable formative years empowerment, the WUSC–ACTIVATE Project has effectively provided over 200 younger Ghanaians with sensible, employable agriculture talents in Asante Mampong, positioned within the Ashanti Region. This initiative, carried out through World University Service of Canada (WUSC) with income from the MasterCard Foundation, goals the important intersection of teen unemployment and agricultural underdevelopment. By that specialize in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in agriculture, the undertaking strikes past theoretical instruction to offer hands-on enjoy, corporation income improve, and mentorship. The first cohort of 209 trainees, predominantly younger girls and together with individuals with disabilities, finished an in depth four-month program on the Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (AAMUSTED) Mampong Campus between August and December 2025. This article explores the undertaking’s construction, its cutting edge venture capital to inclusive coaching, and its possible to develop into livelihoods and toughen native meals techniques.

Key Highlights of the Training Program

The ACTIVATE undertaking’s curriculum used to be designed to hide all the agricultural cost chain, making sure individuals received flexible talents acceptable to more than one agribusiness prospects. Training mixed lecture room idea with intensive sensible software on demonstration farms and in processing amenities. Each module emphasised monetary resources, equipping trainees to release micro-enterprises or protected employment.

Post-Harvest Handling and Food Processing

Participants on this module discovered tactics to attenuate post-harvest losses—a significant problem in Ghana the place insufficient garage and processing result in important waste. Skills incorporated meals preservation strategies (drying, canning, fermentation), hygiene and protection requirements, cost addition to uncooked vegetation (e.g., turning tomatoes into paste or mangoes into dried slices), and fundamental packaging for income. This coaching without delay addresses meals safety through extending the shelf lifetime of produce and growing higher-value merchandise on the market.

Livestock Health Management

This sensible direction lined animal husbandry for poultry, goats, and pigs. Trainees mastered illness prevention, vaccination protocols, parasite regulate, farm biosecurity, and fundamental veterinary first support. The purpose used to be to allow farmers to care for wholesome herds, cut back mortality, and beef up productiveness with out consistent reliance on dear veterinarians—a a very powerful ability for rural and peri-urban farmers.

Non-Traditional Agriculture Production

Focusing on high-value, low-space enterprises, this module skilled individuals in mushroom cultivation (the use of substrate luggage), beekeeping (hive IT and honey extraction), snail rearing (heliciculture), and rabbit manufacturing. These actions be offering fast executive role, require minimum land, and cater to area of interest markets, offering viable possible choices to conventional staple crop farming.

Organic Vegetable Production

Trainees received experience in chemical-free farming, together with soil well being IT, composting, built-in pest IT (the use of herbal predators and botanical extracts), environment friendly irrigation tactics (drip and sprinkler techniques), nursery IT, and seasonal harvesting. AAMUSTED supplied get admission to to farmland and irrigation infrastructure, permitting individuals to finish complete manufacturing cycles and enjoy year-round farming.

Background: Agriculture, Youth Unemployment, and TVET in Ghana

To perceive the ACTIVATE undertaking’s importance, it is very important to inspect the socio-economic panorama it targets to develop into. Ghana’s economic system stays closely reliant on agriculture, which contributes roughly 20% to the nationwide GDP and employs over part of the personnel, predominantly in smallholder, rain-fed farms. However, the digital marketing faces power demanding situations: low productiveness, restricted cost addition, excessive post-harvest losses, and insufficient formative years engagement. Many younger folks understand agriculture as archaic and unprofitable, resulting in rural-to-urban migration and hovering formative years unemployment charges, which hover round 12-15% nationally and are greater in rural spaces.

The Promise of Agricultural TVET

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is globally identified as a catalyst for financial income and formative years employability. In Ghana, TVET establishments like AAMUSTED are being revitalized to offer competency-based coaching aligned with income wishes. Agricultural TVET in particular bridges the distance between educational wisdom and sensible talents, getting ready graduates for roles as agripreneurs, farm managers, meals processors, and agricultural technicians. The ACTIVATE undertaking embodies this contemporary venture capital through integrating corporation acumen with technical farming talents.

Targeting Inclusion: Women and Persons with Disabilities

The undertaking’s planned center of attention on girls and individuals with disabilities (PWDs) responds to systemic boundaries in agriculture. Women represent about 60% of the rural hard work pressure in Ghana however ceaselessly lack get admission to to land, credit score, and coaching. PWDs face further bodily and social stumbling blocks. By making sure maximum trainees have been younger girls and together with PWDs, ACTIVATE promotes equitable financial participation, aligning with Ghana’s nationwide insurance policies on gender inclusion and incapacity rights.

In-Depth Analysis of the ACTIVATE Project Model

The ACTIVATE undertaking distinguishes itself thru a holistic, transition-oriented design that strikes