From Kayaayei to Shea picking, how a Northern girl is fulfilling her dream of getting tertiary education

Young Women in Northern Ghana have over the years traveled to cities in southern Ghana in search of jobs to sustain themselves and their families.

Most of them end up becoming head potters commonly referred to in Ghanaian parlance as Kaayayei, while others may end up in prostitution to survive.

For many of them, accommodation and decent living conditions become a problem as they are unable to raise enough money to pay high rent in the cities.

They end up seeking shelter either in the slums or the streets.

These potters are mostly subjected to all forms of inhumane treatments and abuses and often return to home the north with either sexually transmitted infections or unwanted pregnancies.

32-year-old Abdulai Memunatu from Piisie in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region is one of many young women from Northern Ghana who have gone through the ordeal.

Memunatu grew up roaming the savanna and picking shea nuts with her mom.

This was what her mom would usually sell and use proceeds to cater to the family and pay her school fees and that of her siblings.

But Memunatu would not enjoy her mother’s support for long.

While in Senior High School, Memunatu lost her mother. It was a big blow to her aspirations. Life became tough for the family. Her father, a peasant farmer, was unable to raise enough money from his farming activities to support the family and her education.

Once again, Memunatu’s aspirations were dealt another heavy blow. Her dreams of getting an education became dimmer.

“After [completing SHS], I didn’t know what to do next. A lot of questions [were] on my mind because my dream and my mother’s dream was to see me through [my] education. So I decided to do something good for myself” Memunatu told Ghanaweb in an interview.

Left with no choice, Memunatu was compelled by the unfavorable situation to leave home. She wanted a good life that could afford her a better education and she had to look for it.

Before anyone could talk Memunatu out of her decision, she was on board a bus to Accra in search of a job. With no certificate, the only job she found was head-potting. It was not the kind of job she pictured before she set off from home.

Memunatu, however, had one aim in mind to raise enough money to further her education. So, she had to pick the job.

“It wasn’t easy on my side. I faced a lot of challenges. Experiences like abuses, even though I was [never] abused, I experienced people being abused.

"Robbery, you get about 10 cedis, 20 cedis and at the end of the day Somebody will just take it” she recounted.

After working as a porter for some time, Memunatu returned home, to join one of the 50 Cooperative groups in the shea industry under The Global Shea Alliance in the Northern Region.

Through the alliance, she was given training on how to pick quality shea nuts and turn them into finished butter products.

Turn around

It has been years since Memunatu took the decision to return home. Her decision has not been in vain. Today, Memunatu does not only pick Shea nuts for sale but also operates her Small Scale Enterprise where she produces Shea butter, soap, and hair cream.

She has also been able to fulfill her dream of furthering her education. Memunatu is now a professional Teacher after graduating from one of the teacher training colleges in the country where she pursued a distance learning program.

She now awaits to be posted.

On Thursday, July 21, 2022, Memunatu joined hundreds of other women working with Global Shea Alliance in Tamale for the launch of the ‘Shea Business Empowerment Program’, a three-and-a-half-year program aimed at supporting women in the shea value chain.

The program aims at giving women the tools and skills to be able to produce higher-quality shea.

This is the same initiative that helped Memunatu to find her feet when she lost it all when her supportive mother passed away.

The Shea Business Empowerment program is a partnership between the Alliance and Mastercard Foundation Ghana to give women the opportunity to learn employable skills to take control over their lives like Memunatu did and make a decent living for themselves and their families.

Rosy Fynn is the Country Head for Mastercard Foundation Ghana. When I spoke to her in an interview, she said the initiative was put together to tackle and reduce the worrying rate at which young women migrate to southern Ghana to engage in kayaayei business.

She explained that one of the reasons young women leave their homes in the north to engage in kayaayei in Southern Ghana was because of the lack of opportunities.

“Now we’re telling these women that you can stay in the North, because of the cooperatives we are putting together, giving them the power to sell their Shea at market prices, you’ll be able to have a sustained living experience in [Northern Ghana] and there’s no longer the need for a young woman to go to Accra or wherever in the south for a living.”

Having transformed many lives of the women folk, Ms. Fynn said the program was looking to strengthen the shea value chain to increase participation and ensure that the women have easy access to finances to create market opportunities.

Ms. Fynn noted that at the end of the program, “there will be 90,000 women who will be given access to dignified and fulfilling jobs.”

What this means is that, with initiatives like the Global Shea Alliance, women, especially the young ones like Memunatu, would always be given a chance to better their lives when all seems lost and they can’t figure out the next move.