Ghana’s Agriculture Sector – Overview by Ghana Agribusiness Center

Interview with Stephen Debre, Consultant at Ghana Agribusiness Center

Can you give us your overall evaluation of the agriculture sector and agribusiness in Ghana? What are the trends? What needs to be done? Now that there is a new government, what are your expectations?

As you know, agriculture is a key sector and is a sector that can really change livelihoods and improve our economy. We think government needs a very focused, strategic policy. Currently they have come out with a policy called “Planting for Food and Jobs” and if you look at it, although it has not been well spelt out, we think it is a campaign that can really generate a lot of interest, especially with women and youth in the sector. In general, we expect the government to put in more effort. From the African Union (AU) point of view, at least 10% of the national budget must be committed to agriculture annually as this is likely to result in about 6% growth of the economy. We want government to do this. We want this money to be spent very strategically, particularly on areas that need extra support, for example on infrastructure. We need various irrigation schemes, dams, energy for our processing etc. Over the last few years we have suffered some energy setbacks and so I believe it will be really good for the government to solve this problem once and for all. There have been some improvements now but the costs of electricity need to come down and it has to be more efficient. Agricultural infrastructure is definitely one thing we would like the government to focus on, especially irrigation and roads, markets etc. Aside these, we want government to focus on the soft aspects as well, by this I mean things like knowledge, skills and finance. If you have the finance without the necessary skills, you have nothing, and if you have the knowledge but no finance it equally amounts to waste of time. Government should introduce more programs to encourage youth to get into agriculture. That is where we come in as a centre. Our target sector is mainly the youth. Each year about 3,500 students come out from agriculture related programs, but where do they go? How many jobs are being created? The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) will tell you that not many jobs are being created in the agricultural sector. We want to encourage the youth to take the initiative themselves, they shouldn’t just wait for someone to employ them but they can be employers themselves.

Government should introduce more programs to encourage youth to get into agriculture. That is where we come in as a centre. Our target sector is mainly the youth.

We look at four areas: individuals, platforms, community and policy. We can’t do much in terms of policy except advocate and we can’t do too much in terms of community. We can however work on the individuals and the platforms. We make sure we provide all the necessary information required to go into the agricultural business. We start by giving all the information and news of what is happening in the sector. We also have a market section where you can also trade some of your products. Once you produce something you can sell using our platform. We also have a mentorship program especially for young women. We have had about 30 mentors who were women willing to help any young woman to come into the agribusiness sector and to help them grow. We also have an internship placement option on our platform, so if you are a graduate and you are interested in a particular field, you can go on our site, enter you details and then you will be linked to potential placements. This is free of charge. We have links with many of the companies around here. We also have a discussion forum for discussing issues to do with agribusiness. The site provides all the necessary tools for encouraging people to invest in the agribusiness in Ghana.

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