For years, poverty made small necessities such as noodles and sanitary pads powerful tools of manipulation in Jato Village in the Suhum Municipality of the Eastern Region, where commercial motorbike riders, popularly known as okada riders, exploited young girls, leading to a spike in teenage pregnancies.
The young girls did not receive financial assistance from home to enable them to feed themselves. They therefore solicited prepared noodles — popularly known as Indomie in local circles — from the riders.
As the noodle pack became popular, it earned the nickname “laptop” among the village folks for how the pack flips open, the top covering reclining like the screen of a laptop.
What appeared to be a basic meal became the attraction and craving that lured young girls to the commercial motorbike riders.
With these “laptops”, the riders lured the girls into sexual relationships, which gradually led to a spike in teenage pregnancy cases in the village.
Today, awareness campaigns and youth empowerment initiatives introduced by Plan International Ghana’s Rooting for Change project are changing the narrative.
“Before the project was introduced into our community in 2024, we were having a major challenge with teenage pregnancy in the community.
It was very high. Almost every year, we were recording pregnant teenage candidates taking the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), and it was all because of the okada riders,” the Chief of Jato, Baffour Teitey Adjewi Narh III, said.
Salt University
“The girls depended on the okada riders for food and other school needs.
Parents were not providing these essentials for their wards, and so the girls were seeking them from the riders, who ended up sleeping with them.
But because of the project they introduced in our community, we did not record any teenage pregnancy in the last BECE, that is 2025,” the elated chief disclosed.
Addressing officials from Plan International Ghana and journalists who had visited the community to assess the impact of the project, Baffour Narh said before the project, a lot of things were happening to the children in the village, especially among the girls, explaining that they were also not going to bed early.
However, after the introduction of the project, which came with sensitisation programmes, the children now went to bed early.
The journalists had earlier attended a three-day training workshop organised by Plan International Ghana to strengthen their skills in child-centred, gender-sensitive and safeguarding-compliant reporting, as well as to gain in-depth insight into their programmes and development priorities.
The project
Implemented with funding from Tony’s Chocolonely, Plan International Ghana’s Rooting for Change project was introduced in cocoa growing communities in the Suhum Municipality to address unintended adolescent pregnancies.
Started in 2024 and expected to end in September 2026, the project is being piloted in Aponoapono and Jato under the Aboafa and Asentenapa Cocoa Cooperative unions.
With the establishment of the Community Child Protection and Labour Committee (CCPLC), the Chief said, parents had been educated on their responsibilities and how to take care of their children.
He said the children had also been sensitised to know exactly what to do and where to go should they face challenges, adding that the places included the CCPLC and the Department of Social Welfare, which were both stakeholders in children’s development.
“Now, the children are bold enough to talk to us about their problems.
They are also able to express themselves confidently in public.
They know their responsibilities as children, as well as their rights, something that was not there in the past,” he disclosed.
Other opinion leaders of the community, such as the Line Manager, Human Rights and Community Development of Asentenapa Cocoa Cooperative Union, Ivan Ayivor; the Municipal Head, Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, Ernest Evans Ewusi, and two members of the CCPLC, Michael Amoyaw and Vida Korlekie Djamgbah, all corroborated what the chief said about what pertained in the community before and after the introduction of the project.
Mr Ayivor, for instance, said recently, some of the okada riders approached him and asked what they had been telling the girls because they were now not having their way with them.
“They said formerly, when we bring them ‘laptops’, the girls would be following them up and down, but nowadays, they don’t,” he said about his encounter with the riders.
Reactivate
Mr Ewusi said the project had been able to reactivate its mandate, which was almost dormant in the past.
In interviews with some of the children, they also confirmed what the town elders said.
One of the girls, Janet (not her real name), said but for the project, she would have had multiple partners by now.
She said she used to have a boyfriend, who was not an okada rider, though.
She said she did not know the implications of her actions then that she could get pregnant, but now she did, and it was because of the education she had received.
“I have been advising the girls who are still into that behaviour to put a stop to it because it won’t help them in any way. Some listen, others do not. Some of those who listened had completed school and were now in senior high school,” she said.
George (not his real name) said that although he did not have a girlfriend in the past, he was encouraged by friends to be a go-between — a kind of relationship intermediary — for his friends and the girls.
“So, if somebody needed a girl, I would go and call them for the boys, who, after having sex with the girls, would give me money.
When the project was introduced, and they encouraged us to love ourselves, I changed, and so now when I see the boys doing that, it pains me, and I advise them against that,” he said.
The Project Manager of Rooting for Change, Bless Vieku, mentioned some of the things that had been done under the project, including the establishment of adolescent clubs, training of peer educators, establishment of girls’ football clubs, youth group partnerships and engagement with traditional and religious leaders.
