Public Agenda (Accra)
15 January 2008
editorial
A recent study, conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Ghana has concluded that, "It is possible that if the sheanut and sheabutter industry is given special attention, it could be a more lucrative source of income for young girls and make migration to the South less attractive to them."
This conclusion is based on the fact that most of the young girls who migrate to the south initially engage in the sheanut trade to secure their transport fare to travel to the south only to engage in menial jobs.
Details of the report revealed that many teenage female migrants were exposed to reproductive health risks in the South. Some reportedly became single mothers as a result of pregnancies through rape; others became infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. This could have been avoided if the sheanut industry had been developed as a sustainable source of income.
Thankfully, the government in its 2008 budget promised to invest GH¢550,000 in the sheanut industry in the north. According to the budget, a steering committee to revamp the sheanut industry, which is one of the major pre-occupation of the three Northern regions, has been set up. Our worry is that time and again promises to develop the sector have failed to materialize. It is only hoped this time round, the government will honour its promise by committing the money it promised in the 2008 budget for the sector.
This newspaper thinks that the development of the sheanut industry should be a broad component of Northern Development Fund which was also announced in the 2008 budget with the commitment of a seed money of GH¢ 25 million cedis.
While we await the development of the sheanut industry, the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) should embark on a programme to retrain child migrants already in the cities in Southern Ghana. The migrants are already in some form of informal groupings with their leaders and could form the basis for reaching out to them to facilitate their registration, retraining and subsequent "repatriation" of those desiring to go back home.
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