Ghana

Through its groundbreaking Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign, The Carter Center partners with city leaders worldwide to raise awareness about women’s right to access information and to help cities reach women with valuable information and essential municipal services. 

Access to this information empowers women with a stronger voice, enabling them to participate in public life, utilize public services, and make more informed decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities. In Ghana, the project has partnered with the city of Accra.

How It Started

President John Agyekum Kufuor was constitutionally barred from running for a third term. With no presidential incumbent and no clear front-runner, the political environment intensified quickly in the months preceding the election. Members of the domestic and international community feared that if the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections were not executed properly, Ghana’s electoral institutions and practices could be undermined and other countries undergoing democratic transitions could backslide.

Our Work and Methods

• The Carter Center launched an international election observation mission in Ghana in May 2008 to encourage fairness in the electoral process and acceptance of the election results by all political stakeholders. 

Impacts

• After an initial presidential vote, a runoff and a revote in one constituency, former Vice President John Atta Mills defeated Nana Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the incumbent party.
• The Carter Center concluded that although there were several important areas needing improvement — voter education, political party behavior, and election dispute resolution — the largely peaceful and transparent conduct of these elections was an important step forward in Ghana’s continued democratic consolidation and role as a regional leader.

How It Started

The Carter Center sent an election observation team to Ghana’s first democratic presidential election in more than 30 years.

Our Work and Methods

• A team of 18 international election observers joined more than 250 Ghanaian observers to assess the electoral process in every region of the country.

Impacts

• Jerry Rawlings, a Ghanaian military officer in power since 1981, won with 58% of the vote. Although opposition parties protested the results, The Carter Center concluded that the election was generally well-conducted and properly expressed the will of the Ghanaian people.
• Following this return to democracy, Ghana underwent three more elections, in 1996, 2000, and 2004, in which power alternated between the two largest political parties. 

This project ended in 1992.

How It Started

In December 2015, The Carter Center brought together more than 40 scholars, activists, and traditional and religious leaders to find ways to combat the abuse and oppression of women and girls in Ghana.

Our Work and Methods

The Human Rights Defenders International Forum took place over three days in Accra, with workshops and public sessions on topics including:

• The role of the media and religious leaders in protecting girls
• The challenges of women’s access to leadership
• Strategies for preventing and eliminating violent extremism

Participants included the national chief imam of Ghana, a Senegalese Islamic scholar, the founder of a faith-based organization that rescues victims of human trafficking, and a Nigerian human rights lawyer.

Impacts

• Scholars, activists, and religious leaders have new tools to combat the abuse and oppression of women and girls.
• Forum participants also are better equipped to counter interpretations of faith-based teachings that perpetuate inequality and gender-based violence.

This project ended in 2015.

Current status: Transmission stopped, May 2010
Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication: 2015

How It Started

Ghana, one of the Carter Center’s first country partners in the Guinea Worm Eradication Program, launched its national eradication program in 1988. Nearly 180,000 cases of Guinea Worm disease were reported during the country’s first national case search in 1989, ranking Ghana second in the world in cases at the time.

Our Work and Methods

• The Ghana Guinea Worm Eradication Program introduced the following approaches:
  • Health education
  • Distribution of nylon household filters and pipe filters to strain water fleas with infected larvae
  • Safe, monthly treatment of stagnant water sources with larvicide
  • Direct advocacy with water organizations
  • Increased efforts to build safer hand-dug wells
• Village volunteers, who were trained, supplied, and supervised by the program, carried out monthly surveillance.
• Interventions were tailored to meet the unique needs of migratory farming populations.
• Targeted radio messages and the development of additional educational materials also were important tools in stopping disease transmission.
• In 2001, The Carter Center engaged the women of the Ghana Red Cross Society to work with and support village volunteers in the most affected districts. The Red Cross Society women — who at one point numbered more than 5,000 — were the eyes and ears of the community, reporting cases, ensuring proper use of filters, and preventing worm contamination in water sources.

Impacts

• Despite major setbacks — including ethnic fighting in the highest endemic area and a breakdown in the main water supply in one district — Ghana steadily reported annual reductions in cases.
• In July 2011, after completing 14 consecutive months reporting zero indigenous cases of Guinea worm disease, Ghana Vice President John Mahama officially announced that the country had stopped disease transmission.
• In 2015, Ghana was certified by the World Health Organization as having eliminated Guinea worm disease.

The Center ended its activities in Ghana in August 2011.

How It Started

In 1999, with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program began helping the Ghana Health Service’s Trachoma Control Program promote hygiene and sanitation.

Our Work and Methods

• The Center supported the training of more than 8,000 community health workers, including teachers, environmental health officers, and village volunteers to deliver core program messages to rural villages.
• Radio broadcasts of trachoma prevention jingles were used to reach Ghanaian villagers living in some of the most isolated and remote areas of the country.
• The program donated wind-up radios and supported local stations in the production and broadcast of weekly trachoma shows, hosting “radio listening clubs” in the Upper West region for members to discuss the lessons.

Impacts

• In 2010, Ghana met the World Health Organization thresholds to declare that trachoma was no longer a public health problem.
• In 2018, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country validated by the WHO as having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem through implementation of the SAFE strategy.

The Center ended its activities in Ghana in August 2011.

How It Started

Working with the Ghanaian Ministry of Farming and Agriculture, the Carter Center’s Agriculture Program began assisting farmers in the Ashanti and Central regions of Ghana in 1986 to improve food security. The program was part of a larger joint initiative with the Sasakawa Africa Association, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, that helped more than 8 million small-scale, sub-Saharan farmers.

Our Work and Methods

• Farmers received loans for fertilizers and seeds to grow production test plots.
• The program helped farmers develop and cultivate an improved type of maize, obantanpa — translated as “good nursing mother” — that yields as much corn per acre as other maize varieties yet contains a more complete form of protein.

Impacts

• After successful harvests, farmers taught their neighbors about the new approaches, creating a ripple effect to stimulate food self-reliance in the nation.
• The improved maize was used in porridge for weaning infants, which led to a significant decrease in the incidence of protein malnutrition, a leading cause of infant mortality.
• The program helped identify less costly, more efficient local markets for the farmers to sell their surplus crops, with a higher profit margin. It developed projects focused on postharvest technologies, including methods for processing and storing; and neighboring countries were encouraged to foster lasting cooperative efforts. As a result of these activities, officials from Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal studied Ghana’s experience with the goal of establishing similar agricultural programs in their own countries.

These successes and others in agricultural development programming led the Center to end its in-country agricultural activities in Ghana in 2003.