Securing the legacy of Ghana’s MADE

Development programmes often call on Scriptoria’s support to capture the lessons of their experience and disseminate these through appropriate knowledge products. Last year, our Communications and Consulting Teams provided this support to the Market Development Programme for Northern Ghana (MADE).

MADE, a six-year programme funded by the UK’s FCDO, aimed to boost economic growth and reduce poverty in the Northern Savannah zone of Ghana by helping rural agribusinesses service smallholder farmers with affordable, appropriate inputs to improve their yields. In the final phases of the programme, Scriptoria provided an integrated service to MADE in the areas of communications, knowledge management and website development.

To quickly review and repackage MADE’s extensive documentation and help the team draw lessons from the wide-ranging experience of its staff and partners, Scriptoria carried out consultations in London and in Ghana before drafting a communications plan. The MADE website was completely redesigned with the addition of a user-friendly Resource Centre that highlighted the programme’s market development approach. The new website was enhanced with high-quality knowledge products such as success stories, business cases, fact sheets, animations and videos, and a Partners Directory was populated with 78 company profiles. A dynamic social media campaign was also launched to engage with stakeholders while complementing events in the field.

Beyond showcasing MADE’s valuable work on behalf of agribusinesses and smallholder farmers, Scriptoria was also deeply engaged with supporting sessions to capture lessons learned, and drawing a clearer picture of programme achievements, including the innovative use of Farm Enterprise Advisors (FEAs) by agribusinesses. This support allowed the MADE team to generate quantitative and qualitative evidence that fed into its final report to its donor partner.

Towards the end of the programme, Scriptoria had an unexpected opportunity to contribute to MADE’s COVID-19 contingency plan, developing multimedia training guides for FEAs disseminating COVID-preparedness messages to over 5,000 farming families. If the Northern Savannah sometimes seemed a long way from Scriptoria’s London offices, the experiences of the graduate interns, documented through vibrant blogs, photos and videos, brought our interconnectedness home. One intern observed that her focus was on helping women become ‘ambassadors of change’, which resonates with MADE’s positive approach to gender inclusivity – and we couldn’t agree more.