AGYW Project Drives HIV Testing Uptake Among Young Women in Ghana

In the first half of 2026, something measurable shifted in how young women across three regions of Ghana approached their own health. More of them walked into clinics asking for HIV tests. More of them brought friends, partners, family members along. The change was not accidental. It was the work of the Adolescent Girls and Young Women Project—a deliberate effort to reach women aged 15 to 24 before HIV could reach them.

The project operates in pockets of Greater Accra, Eastern, and Ashanti regions, run by Hope for Future Generations in partnership with Ghana's National AIDS/STI Control Programme and funded by the Global Fund. Its strategy is simple in concept, demanding in execution: send peer educators and community health nurses into neighborhoods to talk about prevention, to encourage young people to know their status, to connect them to testing facilities. Rita Lodonu, who coordinates the project for Hope for Future Generations, reported in August that the approach was working. The organization had already achieved 60 percent of its targets by mid-year. More significantly, the testing uptake was climbing—and people were bringing others with them.

This matters because knowing your status is the hinge on which everything else turns. A young woman who discovers she is HIV-positive can begin treatment immediately, protecting her own health and reducing the risk she poses to others. A young woman who tests negative gains clarity and can make informed choices about prevention. But many people living with HIV in Ghana do not know they carry the virus. They move through their lives unaware, and the virus moves with them. The project's work is partly about finding those people—the ones in communities who are infected but have no idea.

The peer educators and community health nurses are the actual machinery of this effort. They are the ones having conversations in homes and markets, answering questions, building trust. Lodonu emphasized their role at a review meeting in Accra where implementers gathered to assess progress and troubleshoot obstacles. She described the meeting as a space for people doing the work to surface their challenges and, together with leadership, to devise solutions. The remaining implementation period would require intensity; there were still young people who had not yet encountered the project's message.

Cecilia Senoo, executive director of Hope for Future Generations, framed the intervention as urgent. Young people in Ghana face real sexual and reproductive health challenges, she said. The progress so far reflected the power of peer-to-peer education, community outreach, and the deliberate involvement of health workers who could physically link people to services. She urged the implementers to keep working through community structures—chiefs, elders, local leaders—and to push harder toward the targets. "Behind the figures are faces and numbers," she said. "We do not want to hear or see more HIV infections, more young people getting HIV, and people dying as a result of HIV."

Dr. Fred Nana Poku, director of technical services at the Ghana AIDS Commission, positioned the project within a larger national ambition: Ghana is working to end AIDS as a public health threat. Prevention, he said, remains the strongest tool available. But recent HIV trends suggest complacency is a risk. The involvement of young peer educators and community health nurses is critical not just for reaching people but for understanding what actually works and where the gaps remain. Sustained investment in prevention targeting young people is not optional; it is essential.

At the review meeting, queen mothers from the communities where the project operates offered their own endorsement. Naa Korkor Aadjieoyi I, queen mother of Adabraka, noted that public education about HIV had diminished in recent years, making the AGYW project's presence in communities particularly valuable. She called for the work to continue with full force. The project is now in its second half of 2026, racing toward its full-year targets, carrying with it the momentum of young women who chose to know their status and the ripple effect of those who brought others along.