Voices of resilience: Amplifying women's voices through songs for locally-led action and inclusion in Northern Ghana

The project in Northern Ghana used the co-creation of folk songs to bridge local wisdom and scientific insights, enabling climate-vulnerable women to advocate for climate justice and land rights. These songs reached approximately 200 communities via local radio, though the process faced challenges in translating technical climate terms into local languages.

• Women in the Upper West region of Ghana face exclusion from formal decision-making processes despite bearing the brunt of climate-related disruptions, including droughts, heatwaves, and flash floods.
• The project employed a participatory knowledge brokering approach where women's groups and researchers co-created songs over several months, integrating local lived experiences of unpredictable rain cycles and floods with scientific climate data.
• The resulting songs addressed both climate-specific issues, such as rainfall patterns, and non-climatic social issues including land and property rights, and were broadcast to approximately 200 communities via local radio.
• A primary challenge in the project was the language barrier, specifically the difficulty of translating technical and scientific climate terms into local languages without losing accuracy or meaning.

APA

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (2024). Voices of resilience: Amplifying women's voices through songs for locally-led action and inclusion in Northern Ghana. https://cdkn.org/resource/voices-resilience-amplifying-womens-voices-through-songs-locally-led-action-and-inclusion-northern-ghana

Chicago

Climate and Development Knowledge Network. Voices of resilience: Amplifying women's voices through songs for locally-led action and inclusion in Northern Ghana. 2024. https://cdkn.org/resource/voices-resilience-amplifying-womens-voices-through-songs-locally-led-action-and-inclusion-northern-ghana.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |title=Voices of resilience: Amplifying women's voices through songs for locally-led action and inclusion in Northern Ghana |date=15 October 2024 |url=https://cdkn.org/resource/voices-resilience-amplifying-womens-voices-through-songs-locally-led-action-and-inclusion-northern-ghana |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateanddevelopmentknowledgenetwork2024voices, author = {{Climate and Development Knowledge Network}}, title = {{Voices of resilience: Amplifying women's voices through songs for locally-led action and inclusion in Northern Ghana}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2024}, month = oct, url = {https://cdkn.org/resource/voices-resilience-amplifying-womens-voices-through-songs-locally-led-action-and-inclusion-northern-ghana}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }