The Komaale Initiative: Enabling Year-Round Farming Opportunities

Earlier this year, The MasterCard Foundation together with Ashesi University College, hosted the annual Baobab Summit in Ghana. The Summit provided an opportunity for university level MasterCard Foundation Scholars to strengthen their leadership skills and share their ideas and enthusiasm for social entrepreneurship. The impact of activating potential young leaders is inspiring – we learned about their ideas for making a difference in the world and we were impressed with how the character of their leadership is infused with social responsibility.

During the Summit, we were excited to announce five winners of the Resolution Social Venture Challenge (SVC). The Resolution Project developed the SVC as a way to support and encourage young leaders with a desire for social change. With more than 60 SVC applications from MasterCard Foundation Scholars across the Program, picking the top five social enterprise ideas was challenging in itself.

The Resolution Social Venture Challenge is a multi-stage competition combining web-based submissions, live rounds of presentations, and due diligence. The Scholars worked individually or in teams to draft proposals striving to solve pressing social issues. Their proposals outlined the implementation and sustainability aspects of their social ventures in areas such as education, agriculture, development equality, and wellness. Of the 60 applications, 12 semi-finalists were invited to present at the Resolution SVC Forum at the Baobab Summit in June this year, where judges selected 10 participants to move on to the finals. In the last round, the finalists presented their proposals to a panel of judges, who ultimately selected five winners.

The Resolution Project awarded Resolution Fellowships to the Scholars involved in the five winning ventures. These Scholars and now also Resolution Fellows are supported with dynamic, hands-on mentorship, seed funding, and access to world-class global advisory resources from The Resolution Project’s dedicated team of volunteers and guides. One of the winning ventures is led by Gervase Adams, a Scholar at Ashesi University pursing a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

Gervase’s project was motivated by his upbringing in Wa; a municipality in the Upper West Region of Ghana where many people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Knowing first-hand that vegetable farmers in the area struggle to maintain their farming activities during the dry season, Gervase developed the Komaale Initiative which focusses on irrigation techniques that will enable successful year-round farming.

During the dry season, farmers typically irrigate their crops by fetching water from hand-dug wells. These wells are unsafe, poorly-constructed and will often dry up. Farmers and their families supplement their incomes during the dry season with difficult or unsafe jobs like mining or charcoal burning that provide little income and are environmentally destructive.

Gervase Adams: The Komaale Initiative, Ghana.

The Komaale Initiative will support farmers with expert advice and access to cost-effective irrigation practices. Specifically, the construction of tube wells along with the use of hand or foot pumps is one proven methodology that Gervase intends to implement and make available. The Komaale Initiative will particularly encourage and support rice farming as one crop that grows well along the waterways in the region. The initiative will also provide access to clean water for people whose homes are close to the water-ways.

Gervase’s project was developed directly in response to the challenges he faced while growing up. As a son of vegetable farmers, the dry season significantly impacted the income of his own parents, which made it difficult for them to keep up with his school fees. To fill the gap, Gervase would work at various jobs at night while completing his secondary school education.

Gervase is passionate about ensuring that children in his community are able to consistently attend school. He witnessed too many classmates drop out of school because of the need to work full time to supplement their family’s income. The Komaale Initiative promotes education in the Wa municipality by ensuring that school-aged children of farming families have the opportunity to learn, and that education costs are not a burden on the family’s finances.

“I believe in service to others. When I think about leadership, I think about service to mankind. I think about social change… I believe if we have the right leaders who are concerned about the welfare of the poor, we will turn our communities currently bedevilled by diseases, child labour, teenage pregnancies, child marriages and many other problems into better and successful communities.”

Gervase’s ethical leadership values combined with his skills and passion are providing opportunities for farmers in his home community. The Komaale Initiative is one example of how MasterCard Foundation Scholars are proactively addressing the issues that face their communities.

This is the first post in a series from The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program to highlight winners of the Resolution Social Venture Challenge that occurred at the Baobab Summit in Ghana in June 2016.