GRASSROOTS WOMEN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGIES IN GHANA AND NIGERIA

The practice of representative democracy across Africa for close to two decades without interruption had not translated to reduction of the level of poverty for the world's poorest continent. Over the last decade, there had been increase in the level of participation in the political process by grassroots women, especially in Ghana and Nigeria. Does active participation of grassroots women in the political process translate to formulation and implementation of viable poverty reduction programmes by elected officials? The study examined the effect of grassroots women political participation on poverty reduction in two African countries; Ghana and Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey design utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data was collected from 500 respondents (250 respondents) from each country using multistage sampling technique. The response rate was 87.4%. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics while hypotheses were tested using regression. Grassroots women political participation had significant effect on poverty reduction in Ghana (?=.167, t (240) =2.600, R2=0.28, p<0.05), and in Nigeria (?=.082, t (197) =1.145, R2=0.07, p<0.05). Grassroots women organizations need to critically appraise new strategies that would facilitate getting more women into decision making roles.