Gifty Oware-Aboagye is not only a role model to young girls in Ghana on her Social Media Platforms, she is the current CEO of Berry Ladies’ Football Club. On this, she says: “Aside from all of these, one of the things that I do is football. I own a Women’s Premier League Club called Berry Ladies’ Football Club, an activity and subsidiary of Berry Incorporated.It was the second on the Southern Zones League, and in the Premier League, we got the third. We got the best player of the whole tournament. The Women’s Premier League Ghana Best Player of the Year 2021 was recently awarded to the club by the NASCO. We have been nominated for the National Football Award alongside Kotoko, which is also second in the men’s league, and Carila, which is also an incredibly good team, for the Ghana Football League. This is the first time a ladies’ team is being nominated for the award because it had been dominated by the men’s teams before now. Our coach who happens to be the coach of the Black Queens was also nominated for the Best Females Coach Award. We were also nominated for the Best Females Team Award. Our last nomination was that of the Best Team with the Highest Influence on Social Media.
No sooner Gifty Oware-Aboagye joined the Ghana National Service Scheme than she realized that the NSS had what they called the Agric Scheme. It was not vibrant before then, though. Yes. But something different needed to be done fast to revive all the Agric projects that the National Service had. Through Gifty Oware-Aboagye’s persistent efforts, the NSS has put all major farms back on track and acquired new farmlands for cultivation. Now, they have the bubbly Nungua Farms, the Papao Farms which deals with animal husbandry, the Brenam cultivation, Dawhenya Cultivation, the Ejura Mechanized Cultivation. The gestation period of Agriculture yields in the future and as part of the innovative plans being examined, the National Service is taking steps to add value to such cultivated items. And the result? Hear her: “As we are speaking, we have our demonstration farms in almost all the 16 regions of the country. The Board of the National Service also identified what we call the National Agric support. There was another model which was called Planting for Food Adjust. This model was launched by His Excellency the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The idea was to make sure that we feed ourselves and that individuals can also approach the Ministry of Agriculture for expansion of their Agric schemes,what we do is to train people on our farms and collaborate with them and expose them to NBSSI. We built this with MASLOC, where they can get funds from venture capital and Exim Bank so they can be entrepreneurs in their own small way. Because they are partnering with the National Service, we give them the technical know-how and support them with the ideas that we have.
“Apart from entrepreneurship, there are a lot of agencies that can collaborate with us like the United Wealth, which is also a partner owner of the Vanguard Assurance that can design projects for us. We have involved that company to train our National Service personnel. We also have trained people to that point that they are able to appreciate that inasmuch as there is this cry that there are no jobs, if you are able to acquire the requisite skills, a lot of companies will retain you.
Our collaborations with them had been tremendous. Some insurance companies have come in to train our people on how to do insurance brokerage to give them job and extra money while doing the work.”
Whether its on the field of play or off it, the agriculture sector, women struggle for gender parity. But one could argue that in some respects, its also a golden age for women in sports and agriculture and Gifty Oware-Aboagye is changing the narrative in these sectors.
