Women Entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana Gain Access to Integrated Services via Agent Networks

The Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) program’s Women Entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana Gain Access to Integrated Services via Agent Networks initiative was implemented by Grameen Foundation and the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) from 2021-2023.

The WAGE program's Women Entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana Gain Access to Integrated Services via Agent Networks (WE GAIN) was a 24-month initiative implemented by Grameen Foundation USA in close partnership with ABA ROLI and local civil society organizations RISE Ghana, Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) and Healthkeepers Network (HKN). The initiative sought to promote women’s economic empowerment (WEE) in Northern Ghana through RISE Ghana, GDCA, and HKN’s network of community agents and Mobile Telecommunications Network Ghana’s (MTN Ghana) mobile money platform. Through training and coaching on a range of topics including digital literacy and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention, WE GAIN sought to build the capacity of RISE Ghana, GDCA, and HKN to deliver an integrated, market-based, high impact package of financial and non-financial information, product, services, and referrals (Digital Financial Services plus (DFS+) to women entrepreneurs. Grameen also worked with MTN to identify and onboard local private sector companies onto digital payments in order to increase women’s access to productive goods and services they require for business. 

The program's central goals were:

• Identify the multifaceted barriers that prevent women in northern Ghana from starting and growing successful businesses, and explore opportunities to address these barriers through an integrated package of DFS+ services delivered by female agents.
• Support female community agents to launch their own DFS+ microbusinesses, providing financial services to women entrepreneurs in Northern Ghana.
• Increase women entrepreneurs’ access to a greater range of non-financial, business, health, and GBV services that enable them to start and grow successful businesses and live resilient lives.

The Consortium created outreach materials for the program’s messaging campaign that disseminated digital financial literacy, GBV prevention, financial management, business skills, agriculture, and health topics to entrepreneurs in rural Northern Ghana. WAGE and its partners consulted with local stakeholders to identify key issues affecting women’s ability to start and grow businesses in Northern Ghana and develop learning materials to address those issues. The multimedia outreach materials included posters, videos, flyers, and short lessons that WAGE local CSO partners and Digital Financial Service (DFS) agents used to educate members of their communities. WAGE provided technical support to the DFS Agents in GBV and WEE, enabling them to establish mobile money businesses. WAGE observed promising results from the program, including increased earnings among women entrepreneurs, including the DFS Agents. Many of the DFS agents experienced notable growth from $8 to $18 per month. Spouses of the agents also reported less spousal tension and financial stress at the household level, as couples were better able to provide the necessities for their families including tuition for their children

On August 3, 2023, WAGE hosted its final learning event, “Impacting Markets and Financial Inclusion through Women’s Entrepreneurship”, to discuss private sector engagement and public-private partnerships to improve the impact, local ownership, and sustainability of project results. The online event featured panelists from each of the initiative’s local partners and private sector partners to discuss the lessons learned from collaborating to support women entrepreneurs. MTN Ghana, a telecommunications company which facilitates DFS, discussed how they often found it difficult to get the women’s husbands or male heads of households’ permissions for them to participate, when recruiting women to become DFS agents. Northern Ghana, where WAGE was implemented, is a religious and culturally conservative region that adheres to rigid gender roles and norms. Men’s buy-in for women’s participation in economic activity is necessary. The WAGE Ghana initiative included male community leaders and male heads of households in the onboarding and training of the women agents to ensure their support and buyin was gathered. Training sessions focused on technical topics related to business services and gender and power dynamics. MTN Ghana plans to use similar strategies in the future to recruit more women to become DFS agents. The HKN, a CSO partner, discussed the impacts of MTN Ghana’s training including enabling female volunteer DFS+ Agents to reach more women in their communities with reproductive health information and easily register them for insurance. By facilitating these publicprivate partnerships, the WAGE Ghana initiative increased the sustainability of their efforts to continue WEE activities in rural Northern Ghana.