Ghana has strong gender policies on paper but struggles to put them into action, according to a new agricultural scorecard that’s raising uncomfortable questions about the gap between commitment and execution.
The AGRA Gender Mainstreaming in Agriculture Scorecard shows the country scoring 72 percent for policy environment but dropping to 56 percent in implementation capacity, a 16 percentage point gap that essentially means well-crafted policies are gathering dust while women farmers continue facing the same old barriers.
The findings were unveiled at a high-level meeting in Accra, convened by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to address persistent gender gaps in the food systems sector. The event brought together government officials, policymakers, and development partners to discuss enhancing gender responsive decision making in agriculture.
Winnie Osulah, AGRA’s Lead for Gender Integration, stated that the scorecard assessed governments across three areas: enabling environment, commitment, and implementation capacity. Her post event media engagement didn’t sugarcoat the results.
“This tells us that we already have the enabling environment, but we have a gap when it comes to implementation,” Osulah said, emphasizing that policies sitting on shelves don’t benefit women who form 80 percent of Africa’s agricultural workforce. That’s not a typo: eight out of every ten agricultural workers across the continent are women, yet they’re the ones most affected when governments fail to translate policy into practice.
She recommended immediate action to build officials’ capacity, urging a step by step approach to address the weakest scores first. “We need to sit down with governments and make sure they can implement the recommendations,” she added. It’s a diplomatic way of saying what many have long suspected: having beautiful policy documents means nothing if the people responsible for implementing them lack the resources, training, or political will to do so.
Dr. John Jagwe, AGRA’s Country Programme Lead for Ghana, underlined why gender equity is central to the organization’s work in his welcome address. “We know that you get more when you influence one woman than one man,” he said, announcing that 70 percent of new youth jobs in AGRA’s programmes will target young women.
That’s a significant commitment, particularly in a sector where young women often face multiple layers of discrimination based on age, gender, and access to resources. The multiplier effect Jagwe referenced is well documented: when women gain economic power, the benefits ripple through entire households and communities in ways that investments in men alone simply don’t replicate.
Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr. Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, in a speech read on her behalf, highlighted government efforts including the Affirmative Action Gender Equality Act 2024 and plans for a Women Development Bank. “This demands a concerted effort by all women, especially those in leadership positions, to be the voice of the voiceless,” she stated, urging everyone’s commitment to creating spaces where women’s leadership influences policy.
The Affirmative Action Act, passed in 2024 after nearly two decades of advocacy, seeks to achieve equality in the political, social, and economic spheres. It’s one of those policies that looks impressive in press releases but will ultimately be judged by whether it changes anything on the ground. The proposed Women Development Bank could potentially address one of the biggest barriers women farmers face: access to credit and financial services designed with their realities in mind.
There was consensus among participants on the need to bridge the implementation gap identified by the scorecard so as to unlock the full potential of women in agriculture. But consensus at a high level meeting in Accra is easy. What’s harder is ensuring district agricultural officers have the training and resources to actually implement gender responsive programmes, or that women farmers in rural areas can access the benefits these policies promise.
Ghana isn’t alone in this policy implementation gap. Across Africa, governments have signed onto impressive international frameworks and developed national policies that tick all the right boxes. The challenge has always been the last mile: getting those policies from ministry headquarters to the women plowing fields, processing crops, and feeding their families.
The scorecard’s 56 percent implementation capacity score isn’t just a number; it represents real women facing real barriers every day. It’s the woman farmer who can’t access extension services because agents only visit during hours when she’s busy with household responsibilities. It’s the young woman who wants to pursue agribusiness but can’t get a loan because she doesn’t have collateral. It’s the cooperative leader who knows about a great training program but can’t attend because there’s no childcare provision.
AGRA’s approach of targeting 70 percent of youth jobs toward young women could help shift these dynamics, but only if accompanied by the kind of systemic change that addresses why implementation lags so far behind policy in the first place. That means budgets that match ambitions, officials trained in gender responsive programming, and accountability mechanisms that go beyond scoring well on international scorecards.
The meeting in Accra was a start. Whether it leads to meaningful change for the 80 percent of Africa’s agricultural workforce who happen to be women will depend on what happens next, away from conference halls and in the communities where policies either come alive or quietly expire.
