IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jrisks/v12y2024i4p58-d1363350.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Village Savings and Loan Associations as a Financial and Climate Resilience Strategy for Mitigating Food Insecurity in Northern Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Cornelius K. A. Pienaah

    (Department of Geography and Environment, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St., London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada)

  • Isaac Luginaah

    (Department of Geography and Environment, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St., London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada)

Abstract

In semi-arid Northern Ghana, smallholder farmers face food insecurity and financial risk due to climate change. In response, the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model, a community-led microfinance model, has emerged as a promising finance and climate resilience strategy. VSLAs offer savings, loans, and other financial services to help smallholder farmers cope with climate risks. In northern Ghana, where formal financial banking is limited, VSLAs serve as vital financial resources for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how VSLAs can bridge financial inclusion and climate resilience strategies to address food insecurity. From a sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) perspective, we utilized data from a cross-sectional survey of 517 smallholder farmers in northern Ghana’s Upper West Region to investigate how VSLAs relate to food insecurity. Results from an ordered logistic regression show that households with membership in a VSLA were less likely to experience severe food insecurity (OR = 0.437, p < 0.01). In addition, households that reported good resilience, owned land, had higher wealth, were female-headed, and made financial decisions jointly were less likely to experience severe food insecurity. Also, spending time accessing the market increases the risk of severe food insecurity. Despite the challenges of the VSLA model, these findings highlight VSLAs’ potential to mitigate food insecurity and serve as a financially resilient and climate-resilient strategy in resource-poor contexts like the UWR and similar areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. VSLAs could contribute to achieving SDG2, zero hunger, and SDG13, climate action. However, policy interventions are necessary to support and scale VSLAs as a sustainable development and food security strategy in vulnerable regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Cornelius K. A. Pienaah & Isaac Luginaah, 2024. "The Impact of Village Savings and Loan Associations as a Financial and Climate Resilience Strategy for Mitigating Food Insecurity in Northern Ghana," Risks, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-21, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jrisks:v:12:y:2024:i:4:p:58-:d:1363350
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9091/12/4/58/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9091/12/4/58/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Murad H. & Fleischman A. & Sadetzki S. & Geyer O. & Freedman L.S., 2003. "Small Samples and Ordered Logistic Regression: Does it Help to Collapse Categories of Outcome?," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 57, pages 155-160, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Reza Mortazavi & Magdalena Lundberg, 2020. "Expenditure-based segmentation of tourists taking into account unobserved heterogeneity: The case of Venice," Tourism Economics, , vol. 26(3), pages 475-499, May.
    2. Suliman Abdalla & Elnazir Ramadan & Mohammed Ali K. Al-Belushi & Nawal Al-Hooti, 2024. "Unveiling the Role of Arab Universities in Advancing Sustainable Development Goals: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-24, July.
    3. Gabriel Rodríguez-Puello & Ariel Arcos & Benjamin Jara, 2022. "Would you Value a few More Hours of work? Underemployment and Subjective Well-Being Across Chilean Workers," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 885-912, April.
    4. Shen-Ming Lee & Mei-Jih Gee & Shu-Hui Hsieh, 2011. "Semiparametric Methods in the Proportional Odds Model for Ordinal Response Data with Missing Covariates," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 788-798, September.
    5. Shin, Wonkyu & Kim, Youngwan & Sohn, Hyuk-Sang, 2017. "Do Different Implementing Partnerships Lead to Different Project Outcomes? Evidence from the World Bank Project-Level Evaluation Data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 268-284.
    6. Daphna Harel & Russell J. Steele, 2018. "An Information Matrix Test for the Collapsing of Categories Under the Partial Credit Model," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 43(6), pages 721-750, December.
    7. William H. Greene & David A. Hensher, 2008. "Modeling Ordered Choices: A Primer and Recent Developments," Working Papers 08-26, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    8. Wang, Jiangbo & Yamamoto, Toshiyuki & Liu, Kai, 2022. "Exploring the subscribing behavior of customized bus passengers: Active users versus inactive users," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    9. Ucbasaran, Deniz & Westhead, Paul & Wright, Mike, 2009. "The extent and nature of opportunity identification by experienced entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 99-115, March.
    10. Haiyang Lu & Ivan T. Kandilov & Rong Zhu, 2022. "Does social integration matter for cohort differences in the political participation of internal migrants in China?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 1555-1573, August.
    11. Cornelius K. A. Pienaah & Evans Batung & Suleman Ansumah Saaka & Kamaldeen Mohammed & Isaac Luginaah, 2023. "Early Warnings and Perceived Climate Change Preparedness among Smallholder Farmers in the Upper West Region of Ghana," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-19, October.
    12. Tomasz Mickiewicz & Anna Rebmann & Arnis Sauka, 2019. "To Pay or Not to Pay? Business Owners’ Tax Morale: Testing a Neo-Institutional Framework in a Transition Environment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 75-93, June.
    13. Chowdhury, K.P., 2021. "Functional analysis of generalized linear models under non-linear constraints with applications to identifying highly-cited papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jrisks:v:12:y:2024:i:4:p:58-:d:1363350. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.