The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has embarked on a nationwide schools campaign, sensitising and encouraging female students in Senior High Schools and those in tertiary institutions to enlist into the Combat and Combat Supporting unit of the GAF after completion. 

“We want more women in the combat and combat supporting roles to increase. Over the years, women have been enlisted into the GAF but mostly they are found in the services support roles; such as nursing, in the kitchen field, stores field, and administrative positions, among others. But there is the need to rebrand women in the leadership positions in the GAF. 

“It is only through the combat and combat supporting unit of the GAF that women could gain leadership roles; the United Nations has found out that when it comes to peacekeeping it is always men domination,” Col. Elvis Asamoah, Gender Adviser, General Headquarters International Peace Support Operations, has said. 

He said the GAF was now speaking to female students, parents, guardians, teachers and the Ghana Education Service, as well as the public to understand that there was the need for them to inspire the female students to enlist into the combat and combat support units of the GAF. 

“There is no discrimination in the GAF; so, this is for men and that is for women should be the thing of the past. It is an opportunity for all, and women should be forthcoming as the GAF does not have specific training for men and women or proscribe or limited roles for men and women.” 

Col. Asamoah raised these concerns during a discussion with students of the Wa Senior High School as part of a nationwide schools’ campaign tour of the Upper West Region to help promote gender mainstreaming in the military. 

The campaign has a slogan: “Join the Combat and the Combat Supporting unit. We have what it takes to conquer the sky, we have what it takes to command the fleets and we have what it takes to command the troops.” 

Col Asamoah, who is the head of a three-member team from the GAF and officials from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), is expected to take the campaign to eight Senior High and tertiary schools in the region with the Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development and Wa Senior High School being the first beneficiaries. 

He urged the school authorities to help motivate the female students to study hard and score good grades to qualify them to gain admission into the tertiary institutions and come out to join the GAF. 

He took the students through the various ranks in the GAF, and it became known that the current leadership roles in the GAF were male dominated, which he said would have changed if women were in the combat and combat support unit of the GAF. 

“We need to rebrand the GAF in the leadership role through the active involvement of women in the combat and combat supporting unit,” he said, while advising the students not to pay money to people to join the GAF.

Senior Warrant Officer Logah Patience Abla of the GAF urged the students to stop wasting their time on social media but to study hard to score good grades in their examinations to help brighten their future. 

The Senior Warrant Officer who is also the Drill Sergeant Major of the Military Academic Training School advised the female students to crave for excellence in whatever they were doing so that the authorities could see the need to empower them. 

Madam Kissiwaa Gyan, Programme Officer, Women Youth, Peace and Security Institute at the KAIPKC, took the students on gender and sex, gender equity and equality, and urged the students to put their minds to whatever they were doing to achieve their dream goals. 

The Women Youth, Peace and Security Institute (WYPSI) of the KAIPTC is implementing the campaign with the GAF while the Elsie Initiative Fund of Canada is funding the campaign align with the government of Ghana’s commitment to the initiative for women in peace operations, a global effort to empower women in peacekeeping roles.