The impacts of climate change are already pushing beyond the threshold for sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods. In Sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable due to limited resources and adaptive capacity. Early warnings are critical in mitigating and reducing climate-related dangers and building resiliency. That notwithstanding, there needs to be higher coverage of early warnings in developing countries, and there is even less knowledge of their contribution to rural development. Using a cross-sectional survey involving smallholder farmer households (n = 517), this study investigates the relationship between early warnings and perceived climate preparedness in Ghana’s semi-arid Upper West Region. From ordered logistic regression presented as an odds ratio (OR), factors that influenced climate preparedness in the past 12 months before the study include exposure to early warnings (OR = 2.238; p < 0.001) and experiences of prior climate events such as drought (OR = 9.252; p < 0.001), floods (OR = 6.608; p < 0.001), and erratic rain (OR = 4.411; p < 0.001). The results emphasize the importance of early warning systems and various socioeconomic factors in improving the climate resilience of smallholder farmers in Ghana. In conclusion, the study puts forth policy suggestions worth considering.

Globally, there has been tremendous advancement in medicine and child healthcare with increased life expectancy. That notwithstanding, the risk of under-five mortality ─ children dying before their fifth birthday remains relatively high in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Ghana. In Ghana, under-five mortality remains a major public health problem that requires significant policy interventions. Using data from the 2017 Maternal Health Survey (n = 4785), we examined the geographic disparities in the time to under-five mortality in Ghana. The Kaplan Meier estimator showed significant (Log-rank: p< 0.001) rural-urban differences in the time to under-five mortality in Ghana. A disaggregated cox proportional hazards analysis showed that despite wide consensus that children in urban areas have a high survival rate, children in urban areas in northern regions of Ghana, especially the Upper West (HR = 4.40, p < 0.05) and Upper East (HR = 5.37, p < 0.01) Regions were significantly at increased risk of dying before the age of five compared to children in urban areas in the Greater Accra Region. A rural-urban comparison showed that children born in rural areas in all the other regions of Ghana were at a higher risk of dying before the age of five when compared to their counterparts in the rural areas of Greater Accra Region. Other factors such as sex of child, mothers’ age and use of the internet, number of household members, ethnicity and household wealth were significantly associated with the timing of under-five mortality in Ghana. Healthcare policies and programs such as immunizations and affordable child healthcare services should be prioritized especially in rural areas of regions with a high risk of child mortality. Also, there is a need to improve healthcare delivery in urban areas, particularly in northern Ghana, where deplorable healthcare service infrastructure and delivery coupled with high poverty rates put children at risk of dying before their fifth birthday.

Household agricultural decision-making is crucial in navigating household food insecurity amid increasing climate change and variability. In smallholder farming contexts in Ghana and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), decision-making is often the culturally ascribed role of the male family head. Yet joint household decision-making has the potential to leverage the diverse knowledge and capacities of household members to meet the nutritional and dietary needs of households. Using a cross-sectional survey involving 1100 smallholder farmer households, we examined the association between intra-household decision-making arrangements and food security in northern Ghana. Results from the logistic regression analysis indicated that households that practiced joint decision-making (OR = 1.71; p ≤ 0.001) had significantly higher odds of being food secure compared to households that practiced sole decision-making. Other noteworthy socio-economic and agricultural practices that were significantly associated with household food security included household size, marriage type, wealth, and post-harvest loss. The findings have demonstrated that household decision-making arrangements influence how household members negotiate and reconcile preferences in the allocation of resources and consequentially household food security outcomes. Therefore, policies that seek to address food insecurity and other socio-economic challenges in such contexts must critically consider household decision-making arrangements. Gender transformative policy approaches that are inclusive of both women and men in a comprehensive dialog on collective cooperation in household decision-making and control of productive resources should be employed.