Dr. Rita Owusu-Amankwah

Dr. Rita Owusu-Amankwah is a gender and social development specialist with extensive experience in the cocoa sector of West Africa, and is highly familiar with international, regional and national frameworks and compliance standards in the sector.

She served as Country Programme Coordinator for the ILO's West Africa Cocoa/Commercial Agriculture Project (WACAP), pioneering interventions to eliminate child labour in cocoa farms, and established Ghana's first community-based Child Labour Monitoring System — a model later adopted across West Africa. As National Programme Manager for Ghana's National Programme for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Cocoa (2006–2010, funded by the World Cocoa Foundation), and later as Lead Consultant on studies for Fairtrade International and the WUSC-funded INVEST Project, Rita has combined frontline programme leadership with rigorous evaluation.