Although West Africa has one of the smallest CO2 footprints per capita in the entire world, its population is being disproportionately affected by climate change. It is the poorest and most marginalized of any society – especially minorities – who do not have the means to adapt to environmental changes – and the West African case is no different.

EMMAP journalist Philip Tengzu from the Ghana News Agency reported on a solar-powered irrigation facility in the North Gonja district of the Savannah region. This project has allowed 40 women farmers in the community to benefit from an easy-to-operate irrigation facility that can produce about 60 litres of water per minute.

Under the EMMAP programme, Mohammed Fugu reported on conservation agriculture system practices that have been proven as a strategy to mitigate the effects of climate change and soil degradation and build resilience for a bountiful harvest to feed the nation and even export beyond its borders.

EMMAP reporters Kemo Cham and Mohamed Sahr covered Minority Rights Group’s 2023 annual report, Minority and Indigenous Trends 2023: Focus on water, which analyses the disproportionate impact of the global water crisis on minorities and indigenous peoples. In total, they produced ten stories on the water crisis and the many creative solutions being engaged by both civil society organizations and the farmers themselves.

As part of efforts to build resilience against climate change and help boost the food supply chain in the north, the West African Centre for Water, Irrigation and Sustainable Agriculture of the University for Development Studies (WACWISA-UDS) and the Frontier Institute of Development Planning, recently launched a project in four African countries, including Ghana, to develop new agroecological practices that will build on existing local and scientific knowledge  to improve food nutrition, local livelihoods and ecosystem health. It would also enhance biodiversity and improve climate resilience.

The Director of WACWISA-UDS, Professor Felix Abagale, said the project would facilitate the best indigenous farming practices that would go a long way to revolutionise the country’s agricultural system and bring many benefits to the people: ‘We are not bringing anything very new. What we are bringing is that we want to come and understand the indigenous ways of [farming], and as scientists, we do research and improve on what farmers are already doing, which we know is good,’ he says.

While Ghana’s rural communities, particularly marginalized groups like women, people with disabilities, and subsistence farmers, continue to face immense challenges from climate change, there is hope in the form of innovative solutions. However, as the impacts of climate change intensify, it is crucial that local knowledge and creative strategies receive greater support from both governmental and international bodies to ensure that vulnerable populations are not left behind in this global crisis.

Field trip to northeastern Ghana

To amplify the stories of people whose voices are seldom heard in conversations about this global crisis, in early April 2023, Minority Rights Group facilitated a field trip to northeastern Ghana, where subsistence agriculture is the primary source of income for more than half of the population.

In this region, the soil is relatively poor in organic matter and other critical nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. Worsening the already depleted earth is the continuous tillage of the soil and the removal of biomass from the its surface by bushfires and the indiscriminate felling of trees. As temperatures rise, rainfall patterns are becoming more unpredictable and intense. The result is that planting seasons have become shorter and the proportion of arable land is shrinking.

These challenges are significantly threatening farmers’ productivity and raising fears of food insecurity. This is particularly a concern for Ghana’s most vulnerable citizens, such as people with disabilities. For example, as reported by Graphic Online journalist Mohammed Fugu, for decades, Kanyizine Kansah, a 59-year-old visually impaired small-holder farmer at Karni in the Lambussie District in the Upper West Region, has cultivated cereal crops and vegetables during the dry season, using proceeds from the farm to feed his family and pay for the education of his three children.

However, Kansah has been recording poor yields for the past three years due to drought. ‘I used to cultivate about four acres of maize and harvest about 20 bags, but for the past three years, I hardly get about four bags because of inadequate rainfall,’ he says. Fugu reports that Salifu Mariam, a physically challenged woman at Moaduri in the North East Region, is facing a similar predicament, as in 2022, floods swept away her entire two-acre farm. ‘Life has not been easy after the flood destroyed all my food crops on the farm; now I am surviving on the benevolence of people,’ she says.

Young people in the region are also disproportionately affected. In the Northern region’s Yendi Municipality, some primary school students trek about five kilometres daily to fetch water from a nearby dugout during the dry season. ‘When I fetch the water before going to class, I always become very tired and can’t concentrate, and in the evening too, I have to go round and search for water for the family,’ Zulfatu Yakubu, a pupil of Wambung Primary School told Fugu for another article.

Between 1991 and 2002, around 70,000 people were killed in Sierra Leone’s civil war, and an estimated 2.5 million people were displaced. This conflict was marked by the numerous atrocities committed against the civilian population, including sexual violence, human trafficking and the widespread use of child soldiers. Although it has been nearly two decades since the war’s end, its impacts continue to be felt.

Those who endured gender-based sexual violence, kidnapping and sexual slavery brought trauma, injuries, illnesses, stigma, and sometimes children home to their communities. Even when embraced by their families, there were often few support structures in place to cope with the physical and psychological scars.

The children who were recruited as soldiers — sometimes initiated into service by being forced to kill their own family members — were also routinely shunned by their home communities when they returned after the war, in total, 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the war.

For those who were wounded during the war — it was a common practice for the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to amputate the arms and legs of civilians — many continue to suffer from a lack of accessible infrastructure and social support. Indeed some 27,000 Sierra Leoneans are estimated to have been disabled or had one of their limbs amputated throughout the war. After more than two decades of peace, these victims say they continue to bear the pain of the war due to neglect by successive governments who have failed to recognize both the challenges they face and their contributions to the peace the nation is now enjoying.

From 6 to 14 June 2023, a field trip organized by Minority Rights Group allowed six journalists from news outlets across Sierra Leone, Ghana and Senegal to call attention to the ongoing needs that persist as a direct or indirect result of the conflict. This initiative resulted in 14 impactful print, radio, video and online stories at news outlets across the region in both English and French.

Many victims had their villages destroyed, leaving them homeless without the means to rebuild. Following the war, housing communities were created exclusively for amputees, other wounded and widows.

The EMMAP journalists visited two of these settlements: one in Grafton, just outside Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, and one in Kenema, the largest city in the country’s Eastern Province. ‘Apart from the fact that we are living in somehow decent homes, we have been left in these conditions to fend for ourselves. All the promises made by governments after the war have not been met,’ one of the residents told MyDailyNewsOnline journalist Samuel Asamoah.

In Kenema, Seibatu Kallon told reporters her story of being only 13 when RUF soldiers attacked her village. ‘I lost my eyesight because of the severe cuts I sustained on my head, and my hands were amputated at the hospital because my bones were totally smashed as a result of the rebel’s torture,’ Kallon told Awoku reporter Patricia Sia Ngevao.

Despite the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) recommendations for reparations to civilians who faced such extreme trauma during the conflict, journalists found that today, many residents – including Kallon, who is now a widow and a mother of four children–have no means of making a living other than begging on the street. ‘As a woman, I will use my voice to call attention to our plight as war survivors and the importance of recognizing our suffering because we are a living symbol of resilience,’ she says, appealing to the government to fulfil the recommendations of the TRC report.

‘We are not able to forget the past because the present is not treating us well,’ says Kallon.

Komrabai Ferry, a village in the Tonkolili District, in the Northern Province, was where on December 8, 2000, the RUF, leaders of the military and UN peacekeepers met to begin the peace process that eventually led to resolving the conflict. Although the community made history through its contribution towards ending the war in Sierra Leone, it has since been deprived of socio-economic development.

The village’s infrastructure has been severely neglected. Students trek over five kilometres to a crumbling building that serves as their classroom, while women and children walk more than 1.5 kilometres to gather water from a polluted stream. Once a symbol of peace, this historic village still bears the scars of war and has yet to recover from its devastation.

Back in Freetown, the journalists visited Sierra Leone’s Residual Special Court and Peace Museum based on the site of the Special Court, which, on April 26, 2012, convicted Liberian President Charles Taylor for his part in committing war crimes. ‘The court sent a message to other countries. Even if you are president, you have to be accountable,’  the museum director Patrick Fatoma, told Le Quotidien reporter Mame Woury Thioubou.

In Sierra Leone, ‘most of the issues, namely corruption, nepotism, abuse of power and neglect of minors among vices that led to the civil war in the West African country in 1991 still persist,’ reports Ghanian reporter Hagar Sey. Sierra Leone continues to face poverty, poor infrastructure and lack of access to quality healthcare and education.

Yet despite all this, ‘We have come to the conclusion that peace is the ultimate goal. That is to say, with all the problems that we are currently experiencing, it is better for us to be at peace than to experience war,’ says Francis Sowa, National Coordinator of the Media Reform Coordination Group (MRCG) in Sierra Leone, stressing the importance of continuing to tell stories of what happened during the conflict and their ongoing impacts. ‘When we remember these things, it allows us to understand that war and conflict are never solutions to problems. That when we have problems, we must sit down and dialogue, talk and find a solution.’

In many ways, Ghana is leading the advancement of gender equality in West Africa. Women have made progress in health and education at rates significantly higher than other sub-Saharan African countries. The Constitution of Ghana stipulates that all persons are equal before the law, and this provision expressly includes gender.

While this picture is optimistic, it has not translated into improved economic outcomes or access to decision-making. For example, according to the United Nations Development Programme, out of Ghana’s 275 members of parliament, there are only 40 women, representing about 16 percent. At the local government level, where out of the current 261 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives, 38 are women – only 17 percent.

This power imbalance is especially persistent for rural women and girls, exemplified by the treatment of women accused of practising witchcraft. Although a small number of men are also accused, the vast majority are older women – often widows – who no longer have strong familial support or societal power. Some instances may be related to mental illness, adding a disability-rights layer to this issue.

Those who are suspected of practising witchcraft are often forced to flee their communities or risk being lynched by their neighbours, as documented by EMMAP participant Mohammed Fugu who covered the story of two men sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for their involvement in a accusing a 90-year-old woman of being a witch and beating her to death.

To protect themselves from danger, those accused of sorcery flee to witch camps, settlements where they can find some protection under the protection of a local chieftain and in return, pay him and work in his fields. As of 2024, there are thought to be six camps, all of which are in Ghana’s north.

The remote location of these camps means that this issue does not get a significant amount of attention from policy-makers, human rights activists or media professionals who tend to be based in urban areas. To call attention to this situation, from March 30 to April 5, 2023, MRG brought 10 journalists from Sierra Leone, Ghana and Senegal on a field trip to the Gambaga witch camp in northern Ghana, located 160 km from the closest major city, Tamale, and 670 km from the capital, Accra.

There is controversy about whether these camps should be disbanded. The government has previously tried to shut down the settlements in an effort to dismantle the stigma placed on these women and reintroduce them to their communities. On the other hand, these camps have provided vital refuge from persecution. Regardless, there is little doubt that residents live in perpetual poverty and isolation, including a lack of healthcare and schooling for the children.

EMMAP journalists gathered firsthand the heartbreaking stories and current challenges camp residents face: ‘when you’re accused of being a witch or sorcerer, it’s over for you,’ Kologou Tindana, who lives in the Gambaga witch camp with 92 other women, four men and 26 children, told EMMAP journalist Awa Faye in an article for Seneweb. ‘I lost my business which was flourishing. Today, what do I need? I need rice, corn, clothes. I was a great lady and now I am a grandmother. I am old and I accept being a witch.’

Most of the camp residents say their respective communities labelled them as witches and wizards, alleging they bewitched victims with sickness, crop failure or financial difficulties, among other misfortunes. ‘My husband has two wives, myself and another woman. My rival woke up one morning and informed my husband that she saw me in her dream that I was chasing to kill her,’ resident Kologo Tindana, told Ghana News Agency reporter Dennis Peprah. ‘The information got to the community and they labelled me as a witch and attempted to kill me, but I was able to flee to the camp for safety, after they subjected me to severe beatings.’

The team of EMMAP journalists produced 16 impactful pieces of journalism from this reporting trip, disseminated across the three countries in print, online, radio and video formats. This focused reporting came at a crucial time; while human rights activists have long pushed for the government to step in to curb the practice of witchcraft accusations, thanks in part to the attention raised by journalists, on July 28, 2023, Ghana’s parliament passed a bill to protect people accused of witchcraft,

This legislation would make it a crime to label others as witches, send them away from communities or otherwise abuse them for supposed sorcery. However, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, as of September 2024, still has not signed the anti-witchcraft bill into law, citing potential financial implications on the country’s consolidated fund. Civil society organizations are imploring him to approve it before the end of his term in December 2024, arguing that his inaction emboldens perpetrators.

More than a year after this visit, EMMAP journalists continue to call attention to this human rights issue.  Activists stress the importance of education and public awareness campaigns to dismantle the myths surrounding witchcraft. They argue that empowering rural communities with knowledge about mental health, poverty and social inequalities would be key to reducing accusations.

‘We don’t believe that government has entirely closed the chapter on the development and formulation or assenting to the bill hence we are still calling on the President to reconsider assenting to the bill because of the human rights violation and deprivation,” ActionAid Ghana country director John Nkaw told EMMAP reporter Fatima Anafu-Astanga for Ghana News Agency.

As the debate continues, the people living in the camps remain in limbo – isolated from society, stigmatized, and largely forgotten by a country that has made significant strides toward gender equality, but continues to fall short for some of its most vulnerable members. The next steps for Ghana’s government will be crucial in determining whether the country can protect those accused of witchcraft while addressing the root causes of these harmful practices. Until then, journalists committed to telling their stories will remain critical in pushing for change.