Salamatu Fuseini, a 58-year-old Burkinabe woman, was among hundreds of civilian citizens who chaotically fled to Ghana unprepared three years ago following a violent extremist raid on Sawenga, a village in next-door Burkina Faso.
There was no time to check time prior to their forced departure as heavily armed and masked men splashed petrol from plastic containers at many thatched houses in the village, set them ablaze, and opened fire from rifles at anyone they saw around.
Salamatu and more than forty members of her family wandered through forests for days before landing in Nwaare, a community in the Pusiga District of Ghana’s Upper East Region, bordering Burkina Faso.
They brought nothing from their village to that community except the clothes and footwear they were wearing. They had nowhere to lay their heads in the community. Everything seemed hopeless. The future looked dark.
Days after their arrival, they approached some elders in the community who offered them shelter. But that was not enough. They also had to find a source of livelihood to survive.
They were not alone in that struggle. Before they arrived in Ghana, hundreds of other forcibly displaced Burkinabe citizens were already living in some communities in Pusiga and thousands more were scattered across a number of districts in the region.
They were facing the same dilemma and, like Salamatu and her relations, also hoping to return to their villages in Burkina Faso one day. Many of the refugee compatriots she met in Nwaare had fled from Garanga, Foutigue and Kontinga.
Warning
As violent extremist attacks persisted in Burkina Faso and some other countries in the Sahel region, more refugees and asylum seekers migrated to Ghana, settling in a number of local government areas in the Upper East Region.
The local government areas were Bawku Municipality, Bawku West District, Binduri District, Bolgatanga Municipality, Garu District and Nabdam District.
In 2023, Star Ghana Foundation conducted a study on the impact of migrant influx on the host communities in Ghana. The study warned that, as human populations in the host communities continued to swell as a result of the migrant influx, pressure was bound to mount on the existing meagre resources and amenities found in those host communities.
It was a study that would turn things around for Salamatu, her household and hundreds of other refugees and asylum seekers in the region in the end.
Intervention
A Star Ghana Foundation partner, Belim Wusa Development Agency (BEWDA), responded to the warning from that study by developing a project dubbed Building Resilience against Violent Extremism (BRAVE).
The project began in 2024 as “BRAVE I” on an emergency pilot basis in two host communities. It was implemented by BEWDA and STAR Ghana Foundation at Sapeliga in the Bawku West District and Kugri in the Garu District, with 135 beneficiaries reached on livelihood empowerment initiatives.
The beneficiaries comprised some members of the host communities as well as refugees and asylum seekers from three ethnic groups in Burkina Faso― Fulbe, Mossi and Yanga.
Following a successful emergency experiment, the second phase, labelled “BRAVE II”, began in 2025.
Three more host communities in two other districts― Mandago and Nwaare in Pusiga and Bansi in Binduri― were included in the second phase. 750 beneficiaries were directly reached in the second phase in addition to the 135 covered under the emergency programme for various livelihood empowerment activities.
Project
The project got underway with the implementing partners first of all securing community compassion for the refugees and asylum seekers in their host neighbourhoods.
They did so by highlighting the migrants’ situations, frustrations and struggles to the locals at sensitisation meetings held in the various host communities. They also laid emphasis on the need for the locals to accept them and co-exist with them cordially and peacefully.
The project further saw the 750 beneficiaries, including Salamatu, equipped with skills that could generate income for them. The beneficiaries learned practical skills in such trade areas as rice parboiling, soap making, weaving, tailoring, leather works, electrical installation and dry-season farming.
“It is an opportunity for the migrants, mostly Mossis, Yangas and Fulbes,” BEWDA’s Executive Director, Peter Asaal, told journalists in an interview on the project.
“We tried to bring these three ethnic groups together with the hosts, mostly Bissas and the Kusasis, so that they are able to identify the trade areas.”
The director stated that providing such support would enable all beneficiaries to collaborate effectively in groups. He said as they worked together, integration, cohesion, unity, and harmony would emerge among them and the stigma surrounding the refugees and asylum seekers would gradually fade into obscurity.
“And we are going to prepare them towards becoming cooperatives to expand their businesses and strengthen their economic base,” he added.
Recognition
As part of the project implementation, BEWDA and STAR Ghana Foundation also periodically organised a peer-to-peer platform for the beneficiaries to showcase their various cultural heritage and religious practices.
The occasion could be a traditional dance performance, a local food festival or any other event designed to bring people together. Everyone was encouraged to participate in the show. The activity was intended to promote solidarity and tolerance, bridging cultural and social gaps among beneficiaries from different backgrounds.
An indigenous group called power brokers was also set up in every host community under the project to foster peace and security. The power brokers worked on behalf of the community by addressing concerns among the various ethnic groups through regular dialogues. One of the key things they did was securing land through mediation for Fulbe asylum seekers, who were among the BRAVE II project beneficiaries, to engage in farming activities in their host communities.
It did not end there. BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation also undertook Prevention Violent Extremism (PVE) awareness and sensitisation campaigns in the host communities, reaching 4,190 young people.
The two partners further trained 1,000 youth on digital literacy and PVE, and formed digital clubs among some 5,361 youth they reached to promote community awareness against violent extremism and radicalisation.
Similarly, in-school and out-of-school peace clubs were established, with members trained and tasked to identify and report security-related early warning signs to BEWDA.
Impact
On Friday, 27 March 2026, a team of media practitioners visited some of the host communities and interacted with a number of beneficiaries.
The media team saw the items the beneficiaries had produced on their own after the training programmes and observed that they had sold some of the products and reinvested the proceeds in buying more raw materials.
The beneficiaries confirmed that the project had brought about social cohesion among the ethnic groups in the host communities and, through the skills acquired, made them self-reliant.
Salamatu told newsmen she and her family had found a new life in Nwaare and that they had no desire to return to Sawenga.
“We came here not out of pleasure but out of pain and pressure,” she said, speaking in her hometown language, Yanga. “But we have built four houses for ourselves here and we now feel so at home here that we have no intention of going back to our land.”
Hagar Abraham, an Nwaare indigene, said she was in a polygamous marriage and had found it tough to live peacefully with her rival at home until the project taught her the value of peaceful coexistence. She also noted that sharing activities with refugees and asylum seekers in the community seemed impossible until the project came along.
The chairman of the peace brokers group in Nwaare, Sumani Gura, credited BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation for promoting harmony among the company’s ethnic groups.
He noted that the project had bridged gaps and broken down stigma barriers, with the various ethnic groups in the community now attending each other’s cultural events and religious festivals, a rare spectacle and a big shift from how things used to be in the past.
He equally hailed the quality of the products being made by the beneficiaries, saying the parboiled rice was perfect and the locally woven smocks were second to none.
The chairman said the project had also taught the community’s youth not to believe everything they found on the internet and it raised awareness about how they could be lured online by violent extremists and radicalised.
Others
The praise for BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation continued at Mandago, where the chief of the area, Naba Baba Musah Asemada, expressed gratitude for the project.
He said the project had brought the community together and provided opportunities for the youth and women, particularly the refugees and Fulbes who migrated into the community. He mentioned that previously, girls in particular were vulnerable to exploitation, but the project had kept them safe and engaged in farming and selling activities.
“At first, to get money and go to the farm was a problem,” he said. “But when BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation came and helped them (beneficiaries) with seeds, my community changed.”
One of the beneficiaries in the community, Rahinatu Hudu, conveyed her gratitude for the project, saying that it had enabled her to farm during dry season and to support her children’s education.
At Bansi, five women― Issah Rashida, Lucy Azare, Ndepoka Akotey and Hannah Akugri― spoke to newsmen from among 150 beneficiaries at a gathering, hailing the project as a game changer.
“We didn’t know this could ever happen in Bansi here,” said Hannah Akugri. “BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation gave us skills and what makes us even happier is that they also taught us how to live in harmony with our families and how to do business.”
The gratitude was not different in Sapeliga, where the chief of the community, Naba Abodbuudi Emmanuel Ayagiba III, noted that the women in his chiefdom had learnt new rice-processing techniques that made cooking better and easier.
He was also thankful for the project, saying it had helped his people earn money for their children’s education.
Appeals
The Sapeliga chief further expressed hope for more support to expand the impact, an appeal echoed by the Assembly Member for Sapeliga, James Agogo.
“The project has helped the youth, particularly the tailors. It has helped many; they are into business. It has brought unity among the Fulbes, the Mossis and the Kusasis. They don’t discriminate against each other anymore. In those days, a Kusasi man would say, ‘Who is a Fulbe?’ and a Fulbe would say, ‘Who is a Busanga?’
“But after bringing them together, that discrimination no longer exists. We thank Star Ghana Foundation and BEWDA. They also helped youth in farming. They are now busy through this intervention. We appeal for more support for other youth,” he stated.
The chief and the assembly member of Sapeliga are not the only ones pushing for the sustainability and expansion of the project. A beneficiary in Nwaare, Malik Atinga, and another beneficiary in Mandago, Alhassan Bukari, among several other individuals are worried that the absence of dams in their communities may cause a major setback to the youth who are doing dry-season farming under the project.
Bukari in particular believes the project, if sustained, can prevent radicalisation and promote peace, as busy people are less likely to engage in vices and are less vulnerable to extremist influence.
More people also want the project, which comes to an end in 2027, sustained and expanded as the vicious cycle of violent extremist attacks keeps pushing more people from Burkina Faso into the region.
The region currently hosts about 6,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers forcibly displaced from the French-speaking neighbour.
As of the end of February, 2026, there were 5,958 registered refugees and asylum seekers in the region, according to statistics obtained from the Ghana Refugee Board and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR).
There were 634 migrants in Bawku West, 103 in Bawku, 451 in Binduri, 1 in Bolgatanga, 4,047 in Garu, 41 in Nabdam and 681 in Pusiga by the close of February, as per the statistics from the two bodies.
Like Salamatu Fuseini, many of the migrants have found a happy home in Ghana through the BRAVE project. They have closed the chapter on their hometowns.
Ghanaian-born seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 with the United Nations.
With the beneficiary migrants no longer a burden to their host communities but now self-reliant co-residents through a project designed to promote partnership, peace and prosperity, there is a general feeling that the brave step jointly taken by BEWDA and Star Ghana Foundation in those remote communities could attract global attention and set Ghana on a path towards earning a second Nobel Peace Prize.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana/ West Africa
