In Northern Ghana, a young social entrepreneur named Abdullah Hamza has been promoting a ‘greening commodities’ business model that has strengthened the livelihoods of local farmers, while contributing to the fight against climate change. Hamza and his team are nursing economic and indigenous tree seedlings, which they supply free of charge to farmers that have been trained and certified as green farmers to employ regenerative agriculture practices.

“Last year, we nursed about 150,000 tree seedlings including shea, cashew and dawadawa in three locations in the Savelugu, Mion and Nanton Districts of the Northern Region. We have employed about 34 workers, including 13 women, who are placed on wages for managing the nurseries”, Hamza said. When the harvests are finished, his team buys the produce at a premium price for onward supply to businesses and industries that value sourcing raw materials from sustainable areas.

“Since we got enrolled on the programme, we don’t have to worry about how to sell our produce (...) We received extra 5 cedis per bag just because we planted their trees and followed conservation rules”, said Zakaria Issah, a green farmer from Dipali, in Savelugu District. Hamza created the greening commodities initiative as a follow-up to a project funded by the Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme, which supported three communities to promote innovative agroecology models and mechanisms for conservation of carbon stocks. Read the full story here.