The University for Development Studies (UDS) and Global Shea Alliance (GSA) extended its partnership for an additional year by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Wednesday, August 16, 2022, in the Vice-Chancellor's Office, Tamale, Ghana. This year’s MOU was an extension of the MoU signed last year following the satisfactory performance of both partners. The MoU was signed by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Seidu Al-hassan and the Managing Director of GSA, Mr. Aaron Adu. The Registrar, Mr. Nurudeen Issah Abubakar signed as a witness on behalf of the university. The Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Sciences, Prof. Terry Ansah signed on behalf of the faculty and Centre for Agricultural Productivity and Policy Studies (CAPPS) as the implementing and coordination units of all the activities in the MoU for the university.

As part of this year's MOU, UDS through the Faculty of Agriculture Food and Consumer Sciences and CAPPS is expected to coordinate and dispatch 120 students in the third year to have internships with women cooperatives engaged in shea collection and processing. This is part of the strategy by GSA to make the shea business attractive to young entrepreneurs especially students reading agriculture-related programmes. Under the Shea Business Empowerment Program (SBEP) with funding from the Mastercard Foundation, GSA seeks to improve the lives of women shea collectors with the goal of creating 90,000 dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for women in the five (5) Northern regions in Ghana. The current partnership with UDS seeks to strengthen cooperatives and SMEs in the shea value chain in northern Ghana by providing critical skills development. Meanwhile, as part of last year’s partnership, 50 students from the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Sciences had an internship with women cooperatives engaged in shea collection and built their capacity in soft skills such as record keeping and business management as well as entrepreneurial skills. The student interns also learned many things through their engagement with the cooperatives.

To provide a platform for the second batch of students to learn from the experiences of their seniors who had their internship last year, UDS and GSA organized a programme dubbed “Learning Event and Orientation for Year Two” Dr. Andani Andan Academic Chamber. The programme took place immediately after the signing of the MoU. During the programme, Mr. Aaron Adu, the MD of GSA gave an opening statement which highlighted the overview of the Shea Business Empowerment Programme (SBEP) and GSA’s partnership with UDS. Mr. Gottfried Odamtten-Sowah, the Agribusiness Programme Lead at Mastercard Foundation spoke on what Mastercard Foundation is doing to attract young people to agriculture value chains. The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Seidu Al-hassan took his turn to highlight the importance of private sector partnership with academia. He advised students to take successful farmers as role models. The Director of the West Africa Centre for Shea Innovation and Research, Prof. Abukari Alhassan spoke on opportunities for available in the shea value chain.

The Sharing of Student Experiences was moderated by Dr. Franklin N. Mabe, the Director of CAPPS. This involved him inviting three students who took part in last year's internship programme to make a presentation and engage in panel discussions. The last year’s student interns namely Miss Vanessa Ivy Dodoo, Mr. Gabriel Donkor and Mr. Samuel Bakono were given the opportunity to make a presentation on the activities they carried out with the cooperatives, what they learned, the challenges of the cooperatives, the challenges they faced and how they were able to deal with them. They also made recommendations on the way forward. Dr. Franklin Mabe moderated the panel session as well and allowed students to ask questions for responses. Through the sharing of the experience, it came out that more than 10 students are writing their dissertation (project work) on shea. What excited the participants at the event was the zeal of Miss Vanessa Ivy Dodoo in shea value chain. She developed a very good business plan on shea which is under consideration for funding by GSA. After the students shared their experiences, a presentation was made by Edwin Zuta, the Partnership Manager at GSA. His presentation centred on guidelines for selected students for year 2 internship. He took the students through what was expected of them. The last activity on the programme saw the Department of Cooperatives in the Northern Region give out certificates of registration to the invited GSA Sustainability partners on behalf of their respective cooperatives.

Just as in last year’s package, each student intern is expected to receive a monthly stipend for the two months. Also, the University through the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Sciences and CAPPS will receive an amount of money to take care of the monitoring of students on the field. Kudos to Dr. Franklin N. Mabe, the Director of CAPPS for working tirelessly to execute the last year’s contract and secure this year’s partnership as well.