Dozens of women in Jana, Ghana’s Northern Region, completed soap making, business and savings training under an Adunyame Foundation programme meant to end financial dependence on men.
Community members say women in Jana have historically relied on husbands and fathers for household income. Organisers are trying to break that pattern through technical training, startup capital and a formally organised cooperative rather than a single workshop.
The sessions, hosted at the conference centre of the Jana Chief’s Palace, combined two tracks. One covered business fundamentals: spotting opportunities, bookkeeping, customer service and marketing. The other was hands on, walking participants through liquid soap production, safe chemical handling, quality control and packaging, ending in competency assessments rather than certificates alone.
Ten participants received full startup kits, each containing soap making chemicals, production containers and protective equipment. Organisers estimate every kit can produce roughly 50 bottles of soap and represents about GHS 1,500 in startup value.
Sahada Issah, one of the participants, said the value went beyond the recipe itself. Her training, she said, was “not just in soap making but also how we can sell ourselves.” She said she intends to grow the business so the foundation is more impressed on its next visit.
To keep the group intact after training ends, beneficiaries have been formed into a women’s cooperative placed under the patronage of the Jana Queen Mother, a structure meant to pool purchasing, share knowledge and improve accountability among members. The foundation also linked participants to Sinapi Aba Savings and Loans, a microfinance institution that has operated in Ghana since 1994, for weekly susu collections meant to build saving habits ahead of future loan applications.
Sule Binta, another participant, said the group plans to support one another and that the savings link will eventually open access to loans for expansion. She said the training also pushed her to think beyond selling within the village and toward reaching hotels and bigger customers.
Perez Perry Adunyame, the foundation’s project lead, said the programme was not a single visit and that monitoring, mentorship and support for the cooperative would continue under the guidance of the chief’s palace and the Queen Mother.
Frema Adunyame, the foundation’s founder, framed the effort as a response to unemployment and what she called unemployability. The Adunyame Foundation is named for her and has previously focused on girls’ education through its Aketesia Project, a school based mentorship programme launched in 2023. The Jana initiative marks an extension of that work into adult women’s economic independence rather than school age mentorship.
The foundation said it will track outcomes through monthly monitoring visits and business performance assessments, and that continued mentorship will determine whether the cooperative model can sustain itself once the initial kits and training sessions are gone.
