Diamond FM salutes rural women

Management of Diamond FM, a Tamale based radio station has applauded rural women for their contribution towards enhancing agriculture and improving food security to eradicate rural poverty.

Management of the station said while celebrating women on the occasion of the International Day of Rural Women, a day set aside by UN, management flags the slow progress for women inequality gap, which continued to widen.

Mr Nelson Adanuti Nyadror, Project Manager of Diamond FM/STAR Ghana Advocacy Project, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Friday in Tamale said the livelihoods of rural women, which were mostly in food production and cottage industries was threatened due to the lack of or high cost of inputs such as quality seeds to sow, fertilizer, access to arable land and tractor services and access to information on agriculture.

He said the station recognized the important contributions of rural women and smallholder farmers in hard to reach localities, which was the bedrock of its advocacy project titled, “Tackling bottlenecks to the development of rural agriculture in the Northern region; Improving rural farmers access to agricultural input supplies”.

Mr Nyadror said the project, which targets rural women and others with vulnerability group including Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) and the aged, was in fulfillment of its objective to become the reference point for news and information on northern Ghana by giving voice to the voiceless and lifting the people from ignorance and underdevelopment.

“We strongly believe that using media effectively to empower these people, we are contributing to building confident, self-reliant people who will be proud of their cultures and achievements,” he said.

He called on government to continually fashion policies and programmes that would bring significant impacts and gains into the lives of rural folks particularly women.

“The government should ensure the timely release of agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals. The inputs should be accessible and affordable to the rural farmer and more importantly, agricultural information should reach the doorsteps of rural farmers through any means possible,” he said.