Baseline assessment; honey and Beewax value chain in the Upper East Region of Ghana

Overview

A baseline study of the honey and bee wax value chain in the Upper East region was conducted by the Agresearch Lead team which was implemented by ORGIIS, an NGO in Ghana and financed by NEO from France. The study objectives were;

a. Identify and assess all the actors including organizations (private businesses, government, research academic and civil society organizations, CBOs (farmers, producer groups/cooperatives) etc. in and outside the study location that are involved in the targeted GVCs.

b. Identify and analyze the production capacity (current and projected volumes) including gaps and potentials for the development and commercialization of the honey and wax value chains. This should include the potential and ease of organic honey and wax production.

c. Assess and analyze the interest and willingness of the communities to participate, capacity gaps including technological and technical needs, past experiences, lessons from similar and past initiatives within the landscape indicating specific communities that this may be possible.

d. Conduct a holistic assessment and provide a global SWOT analysis for the development of the value chains.

e. Generate relevant information on gender and youth inclusion in the production (main constraints faced by women and youth, access to resources, gender needs, etc.) to help better understand how to include and support women and youth participation in the value chain

f. Generate a comprehensive report detailing the methodology, key findings, recommendations and conclusions drawn from the assessment.

g. Develop a business plan/strategy to support the development and the commercialization of the GVCs based on the initial assessment report. This implies that the consultant must ensure that he/she gathers all the relevant information needed for the plan during the consultations for assessment. The Business plan must provide details on business development strategy including cashflow analysis and projections.

h. Develop a PowerPoint Presentation to summarize the findings (with less text and good pictures) and present to the partners in a review and validation workshop to be organized by the contracting organizations. Project details:April, 2022 – September, 2022Builkawa, Builsayenning and SGKG CREMAs in the Upper East region of Ghana

Study location

Technical approach

The survey deployed a qualitative data collection approach and complemented it with quantitative data to generate baseline data for quantitative indicators and for monitoring and evaluation purposes. The consultant reviewed documents on the CREMAs, project documents from other projects such as the Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH), documents from the Wildlife Division. The assignment was conducted, using participatory tools and methods taking into consideration chief and landowners, existing honey producer groups, women, youth, government institutions, among others. This evaluation targeted three CREMAs in about fifteen communities in the Upper East region. The project targeted bee keepers, marketing agents (retailers and wholesalers) and specific stakeholders in the Upper East region who are into the honey and bee wax value chain.

Quantitative approach (Gender Inclusive approach)

Proposed sample

CREMA	Total	Male	Female	Total
BUILKAWA	12 communities	50	50	100
BUILSAYENNING	10 communities	40	40	80
SKGK	9 communities	30	30	60
Total = 3		120	120	240
Target value chain actors
hive producer
Beekeeper,
hive product trader
processors
Wholesale/retailers

Qualitative approach

The stakeholders below were engaged in the qualitative survey

Type of stakeholder	Type of instrument	Level of engagement
Youth groups	FGD/Spiderweb instrument	Community level
Women groups	FGDs	Community level
Honey producer groups	FGDs/Spiderweb instrument	Community level
Chiefs and landowners	KIIs	community
WD	KIIs	Districts/regional level
MOFA	KIIs	District/regional level
Executives of Honey groups	KIIs

Tasks carried out:

The activities the team carried out were;

Organized inception meeting with partners to discuss the technical approaches.
Prepared and submitted an inception report detailing the revised methodology, approach and assignment work plan.
Developed data collection instruments such as the Questionnaire, FGD and KII guides.
Programmed questionnaires using Kobo collect and conducted in-house testing.
The human resource arrangements (enumerators, supervisors and core team members) for quantitative and qualitative data collection in all project areas.
Trained field team members on survey protocols and instruments used.
Data collection (Quantitative and Qualitative) and data quality assurance in the Upper East region of Ghana.
Data collation, cleaning and analysis.
Prepared draft report presented findings in stakeholder validation workshop.
Reviewed and incorporated inputs from stakeholders.
Prepared business proposal.