From May 9 to May 11, 2024, the Effutu Municipal Assembly, in collaboration with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), organized a three-day training program in soap-making for 52 women in Nsuekyir near Winneba. This initiative, part of the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility project, aimed to provide participants with practical skills in producing liquid and bar soap, shampoo, bathing gel, and detergents using locally available ingredients.
The training emphasized sustainability, marketing, and financial management, with a focus on empowering women to establish small businesses. Juliana Odei Yeboah, a training agent, demonstrated the production processes, highlighting the business potential of soap-making. Participants received start-up kits to help them launch their ventures, and the Head of the Business Advisory Centre, Miss Linda Amoaning, stressed the importance of proper budgeting, record-keeping, and planning for long-term success.
A Commendable Initiative, But Where’s the Ambition?
While the training program is a laudable step towards empowering rural women and diversifying income streams, it raises questions about the scale and vision of such interventions. Soap-making, while a useful skill, represents a limited scope for economic transformation. With the growing unemployment rates and lack of industrial opportunities in rural Ghana, is soap-making the best the UNCDF and Effutu Municipal Assembly could envision for long-term economic development?
Here’s why this initiative, though helpful, falls short of a bigger vision:
- Limited Economic Scale: Soap-making businesses often operate on a small scale with limited profit margins. While they may provide supplemental income, they are unlikely to lift participants out of poverty or significantly boost local economies. A more ambitious program could focus on industries with higher growth potential and larger markets, such as agro-processing, textiles, or manufacturing.
- Missed Opportunity for Youth Engagement: The program primarily targets women, which is commendable, but it misses the chance to involve younger people, who face staggering unemployment rates. Broader initiatives could integrate training for youths in high-demand skills, such as digital literacy, renewable energy, or vocational trades, to future-proof their livelihoods.
- Lack of Infrastructure and Scaling Support: While start-up kits are useful, the absence of follow-up support for scaling businesses limits the program’s impact. A robust vision should include access to microloans, partnerships with larger companies for product distribution, and opportunities to form cooperatives for mass production and better market penetration.
- Short-Term Impact, Long-Term Uncertainty: The focus on soap-making doesn’t address systemic economic challenges in Effutu. Building factories, fostering industrial zones, or investing in large-scale agricultural processing plants would have a much broader and longer-lasting impact on the local economy.
A Call for Broader Ambitions
The UNCDF’s efforts to empower rural women deserve recognition, but they also highlight the need for interventions with a broader and more transformative vision. While soap-making offers an immediate income opportunity, leaders must think beyond these short-term gains to address the root causes of poverty and economic stagnation.
Why not leverage the same resources to establish agro-processing hubs, create local manufacturing facilities, or provide training in cutting-edge industries? These initiatives would create jobs, attract investment, and provide a stable foundation for economic growth in Effutu and beyond.
The women of Effutu—and indeed, Ghana as a whole deserve more ambitious programs that position them as key players in a growing economy, not just small-scale producers. It’s time to think big and act boldly for sustainable, inclusive development.
