From Head Porters to Business Owners: 25 Young Women Graduate from in Accra
Twenty-five young women, many of whom once carried loads through Accra's streets and markets as Kayayei, have graduated from a joint UNFPA Ghana skills and empowerment programme, marking a shift from economic vulnerability to self-reliance.
The graduates completed their training under two linked initiatives: the Kayayei Assistance Project (KASPRO), delivered with Prudential Life Insurance Ghana, and the McKingtorch Africa ECOFEM Project, delivered with McKingtorch Africa and PAYDP, with support from Global Affairs Canada. Most had migrated from northern Ghana with little formal education and few options beyond head portering. They leave the programme with recognised vocational skills in tiling, painting, and turning plastic waste into fashionable accessories, alongside completed training in sexual and reproductive health and protection from gender-based violence.
The results are concrete. All 25 graduates have received start-up capital to launch their own ventures. Each has completed a full course of SRH and GBV education, giving them not only a trade but the knowledge to protect their own health and safety as they build their businesses. Several have already lined up their first paying clients, turning a training certificate into an income.
For Salamatu, graduate of KASPRO Phase III, the change is already personal.
"Before this programme, I woke up every day not knowing how much I would carry, or how much I would earn. Now I have a skill in tiling that nobody can take from me, and I have my own capital to start my own work. I am no longer just surviving in Accra. I am building something."
Delivered on behalf of the UNFPA West and Central Africa Regional Director, Dr Sennen Hounton, in a speech read on his behalf, said:
"These 25 women arrived in Accra carrying loads on their heads and are leaving carrying skills, capital and a plan for their own future. That is what happens when partners like Prudential Life Insurance Ghana, McKingtorch Africa, PAYDP and Global Affairs Canada choose to invest in young women instead of looking past them. Ghana has built something worth learning from here. Our task now is to take this model further, across the region."
The Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer of Prudential Life Insurance Ghana, Kokui Bulley, said the graduation represented much more than the completion of a vocational training programme.
"It is the completion of a mindset shift. These young women walked in seeing themselves as head porters, and they are walking out seeing themselves as tilers, painters, designers and business owners. For Prudential, this is what social responsibility should look like: not a one-off gesture, but a structured pathway that we stay committed to, year after year, until the results speak for themselves."
UNFPA Ghana commended Prudential Life Insurance Ghana and McKingtorch Africa for their sustained partnership and leadership in channelling private sector and development resources into structured, lasting opportunity for young people. UNFPA also extended its appreciation to Global Affairs Canada for its steadfast support, and to PAYDP and all implementing partners whose collaboration made the programme possible. For the 25 graduates, the achievement is both immediate and deeply personal: a livelihood of their own, and proof that where they started is not where they must remain.
