About 12,000 smallholder farmers have been targeted by Ecocare Ghana and Tropenbos Ghana for the EU Landscapes and Environmental Agility across the Nation (LEAN) Project in the Transitional zone of Ghana. To help improve the livelihood of these farmers, the local NGOs have distributed tree and fruit seedlings and trained the selected farmers on alternative livelihoods, nursery management, farmer management natural regeneration, and climate-smart agriculture amongst others.
The project which began in November 2020 and will end in October 2024 is to directly contribute to the national efforts of conserving biodiversity, improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, increasing climate change resilience, and reducing emissions from land use changes in the savannah, high forest and transition zones of Ghana. The consortium of four (4) implementing NGOs - the Rainforest Alliance (RA), Tropenbos Ghana (TBG), EcoCare Ghana, and World Vision Ghana, will be working closely with the EU Delegation and other stakeholders. Both Ecocare Ghana and Tropenbos, implementers of the LEAN project in the Forest Savannah Transition landscape, which has an increasing percentage of youth and women engaged in agricultural production and most households are engaged in crop farming, with the majority engaged in the production of food crops, palm tree and cash crops like cocoa.
The LEAN project is expected to help to build collaborative, participatory, gender-sensitive and informed decision-making processes at the local level with all relevant stakeholders across multiple sectors.