Daniel Fahene Acquaye, agribusiness specialist and Chief Executive Officer of Agri-Impact Group, has underscored the vast job creation potential within Ghana’s agricultural sector, especially for young people.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s Breakfast Daily on Wednesday, June 18, he highlighted Agri-Impact’s Harnessing Agricultural Productivity and Prosperity for Youth (HAPPY) Program, which aims to create job opportunities across the agricultural value chain for young individuals.
He emphasised that Ghana’s reliance on food imports could be transformed into a powerful engine for employment if strategic investments are made in local production.
“If you are importing, let’s say, $600 million worth of rice, convert that into agricultural production and you will see the number of jobs that rice alone can create—if we develop the infrastructure. If the heavy lifting is done by government and the private sector leverages that, rice alone can give us over a million jobs.”
The 326,000 jobs we’re talking about—for us, that’s not even much, because we are looking at four value chains: rice, soya, poultry, and tomatoes. If you look at rice, from the North all the way down, there are so many areas where we can grow more,” he said.
The agribusiness specialist further called for the development of strong agribusiness anchor champions within the private sector to complement government efforts in agricultural infrastructure development.
“We need to build agribusiness anchor champions—private sector actors—because when the government builds the infrastructure, you need people with the resources and knowledge, strong enough to leverage that infrastructure,” Mr. Acquaye emphasised.
Agri-Impact Group is one of the key sponsors of Channel One TV/Citi FM’s AgriFair, scheduled for Friday, June 20th to Sunday, June 22nd, 2025.
