This video documentary captures the stories of the women VSLA in 4 communities in two clusters to highlight the achievement of the 2SCALE program.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) awarded the 2SCALE program to a consortium comprising the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and the Base-of-the-Pyramid Innovation Center (BoPInc). 2SCALE started in June 2012, with the goal to improve rural livelihoods and food and nutrition security in Africa.

The program was designed to incubate and accelerate inclusive agribusiness development. 2SCALE works together with private and public partners to develop partnership and business models that promote inclusiveness, develop (new) competitive edge, and have potential for scaling.

The public-private partnerships (PPPs) are the core implementation modality to achieve the objectives of the program. The PPPs support value chain development, agribusiness cluster formation and enabling business environments. The agribusiness cluster approach helps rural smallholders to develop farming as a business and to supply agricultural products for local, national, regional and international markets.

2SCALE partners with national and multinational agri-food companies as drivers to increase productivity and to improve efficiency and sustainability of supported agribusiness clusters and value chains. Specific attention is given to youth and women to integrate value chains (as farmers, laborers, entrepreneurs, service providers). Specific attention is also given to “base of the pyramid” (BoP) consumers and smallholder farmers; they are the vast majority of people and therefore the largest market for food products in Sub-Saharan Africa.

2SCALE partnered SEND GHANA and EPDRA Saboba to implement the project activities in five soybeans clusters in the Eastern Corridor of Northern Ghana. In the various clusters, 2SCALE builds capacities of the project principals based on the needs of various identified actors in the soybeans value chain. Critical and peculiar challenge among all the clusters is the lack of credit for women soybean farmers and women engaged in off-farm economic activities (soybeans processing, petty traders).

To address the issue of women access to credit for farming, 2SCALE piloted Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) in some selected communities in the project operational area. Barely a year and half from inception the scheme worked and has since addressed the challenge of women farmers access to credit in the project (piloted) communities. It has also impacted positively in the lives of the women and their households respectively.