Only 4.0% of total bank lending in Ghana went into agriculture in the last five years.
According to C-Energy Global Holdings, the constrained access to funds from most banks can be traced to the perceived risks of poor record-keeping practices which affect the assessment of farmers’ creditworthiness, extremely low level of agriculture mechanisation coupled with post-harvest losses.
The outturn of these risks, it said can be seen in the sector’s deficient performance and high credit defaults. Non-performing loans for the sector averaged 30% over the last 5 years relative to the 17% averaged by the banking industry across all sectors, evidencing banks’ hesitation to fund the agriculture sector.
“Until the funding gaps are fully plugged, food insecurity remains a threat to the nation”, it added.
It also expressed worry about the abysmal performance of food production in the country.
Therefore to reverse this trajectory, it is calling for access to sustainable financing is needed to improve productivity and scale up production to support the rest of the region.
Ghana witnessed slight improvements in productivity in the initial stage (Phase 1) of the Planting for Food and Jobs Initiative and other government intervention programmes.
However, the country saw an unprecedented rise in food prices in 2022 evidenced by the national food price index which increased by 23.8% in 2022.
C-Energy Global Holdings said this widened the country’s exposure to food security risks.
The country ranked 83rd amongst food-secure countries in the world according to the Global Food Security Index- 2022 report with a score of 52.6%.
In the wake of climate change, the country’s food security is also at risk. Ghana is one of the top 10 countries impacted severely by climate change despite contributing the least to global warming.
Agric economyvalued at $12.6bn
Ghana’s agriculture economy is valued at about $12.6 billion.
The sector contributed an average of 20% to GDP in the last Five years. Cash crops and other commodity exports from agriculture account for 20-25% of total export revenues for the nation.
The sector is also responsible for employing over 35% of the total employed labor force. Agriculture however remains rainfed and on a subsistence basis with only 15% of farms in Ghana commercialized.
Low mechanization, poor farm recordkeeping, inadequate storage & processing capacities, poor rural transportation infrastructure and post harvest losses are the core challenges affecting agriculture sector performance and disincentivizing financing for the sector
Two farmers, Kwame Appiah, 44, and Thomas Brekese 57, are in critical condition battling for their lives at the St. Francis Xavier Hospital in Assin Fosu and Assin Manso Health Center respectively.
Both victims and two others who are currently on the run engaged in a fierce scuffle and subsequently inflicted cutlass wounds on themselves.
Narrating the cause of the incident, the victim Kwame Appiah said while on his farm, Thomas Brekese and his accomplices confronted and accused him of harvesting their fish.
They had set up a fish trap on river Ochi at Besease but met the trap empty upon checking which they suspected Kwame Appiah of stealing the fish from the trap.
The accusation did not please Kwame Appiah the victim resulting in a fight between them and subsequently causing harm to themselves.
The accused person without any provocation threatened and started butchering him. He retaliated by pulling out his cutlass started hacking him too.
The case has been reported to the Police Station for an investigation.
The former Communications Director of the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT) Norbert Gborgbortsi has claimed that about 40 to 50 % of some private senior high schools which were once very popular have been turned into poutry and pig farms.
According to the Educationist, these schools have folded up due to frustration their proprietors have had to endure due to the implementation of the Free Senior High School programme.
Speaking on Ghana Kasa show on Kasapa 102.5FM Tuesday, Norbert Gborgbosti who did not name any of such schools turned into a poutry of pig farm, alleged there’s a calculated move to collapse private schools so there will be only public schools operating at the Senior High School level.
”Schools established by private individuals which will serve as competition to the government schools are being closed down so we have like the Nkrumah’s era one party state, so that we have only government schools that are operating.
They know that if they allow the private schools to operate at their maximum and the public schools becuase of free SHS they have lots of students in there, the rate at which absorption is done will reduce, thereby making the private schools more popular.
So they have to find a way of collapsing them, making them not workable and when you do this you are collapsing the whole nation. Because the State will be denied taxes that would have come from the private schools,” he told host Bonohene Baffuor Awah.
Mr Gborgbortsi added: ”It is not surprising that some of the private senior high schools in the country have turned into poultry and pig farms.
It is very wrong, about 40 to 50% of private schools which were very popular have been turned into poultry farms and they are using it for other things becuase the fustration is too much.
Even this year, more schools will fold up. During last year’s placement for BECE graduates, I encountered more than 10 students who had good grades but just because they attended private schools they were not placed in any school. And then when you go to the Education Office, the officers will tell you that next time, let your children attend government schools and not private schools so that it will be easy to place them in senior high schools.
It is something that is planned and known to everyone, so when you do a review, you will correct all these mistakes and make sure you encourage competition. Who told you it’s through monopoly that Free SHS will be sustained.”
Significant surges in imports from Ukraine threaten, if continued, the stability of some European farming sectors, according to the European People’s Party Group (EPP).
In a letter to President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the EPP group has voiced “the concerns of several EU agriculture sectors that are being severely affected by unlimited imports from Ukraine, following the implementation of Autonomous Trade Measures (ATMs).
While it says it wants to underscore its unwavering support for the Ukrainian people and its commitment to backing any initiatives aimed at assisting them in dealing with the aftermath of the conflict stemming from Russian aggression, it goes on to say “we think proper reflection should be given to certain sectors, which seem to shoulder an additional burden of this support and contend with an unprecedented influx of imports from Ukraine.
“Specifically, farmers and producers in the poultry sugar and eggs sectors are grappling with significant surges in imports from Ukraine, posing
– if continued – a threat to the stability of these sectors and jeopardizing the future of their producers.
“The redirection of volumes, originally intended mainly for third countries,
predominantly to the EU, is causing substantial disruptions to these markets.”
It also says differences in production standards and the absence of a level playing field are giving rise to unfair competition anda simple continuation of the current ATMs is untenable and some adaptations and safeguards need to be injected.
The letter goes on to say the Commission must propose solutions to safeguard these affected sectors while ensuring an adequate level of support for Ukraine.
“Considering options such as registering imports with a deposit system and establishing thresholds beyond which exports should be directed towards third countries could be a viable path forward and should be taken into account by the Commission.
“It is also crucial for Ukraine’s future recovery to maintain some access
to export markets in third countries and prevent it from becoming overly reliant on EU exports. Moreover, these markets in third countries could be occupied by Russia, which would lead to further economic and political tension.”
Last year a leaked analysis suggested the integration of Ukraine into the EU could cost some €186 billion over seven years and result in significant cuts to Common Agricultural Policy Payments in existing countries.
The African Development Bank Group and the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) committed on Thursday to strengthen their collaboration to increase food production and provide better nutrition for Africa’s growing population.
With 65% of global uncultivated arable land, the African Development Bank believes that the continent can feed itself and the rest of the world.
African Development Bank President Dr Akinwumi Adesina received Africa-based Directors General of CGIAR at the bank headquarters in Abidjan on Thursday to forge ways of scaling up food and agricultural productivity on the continent.
CGIAR centres are located across African countries and focus on enhancing food and nutrition security, reducing poverty, and improving natural resources and ecosystem services. They are critical to achieving food security on the continent, just as their counterparts in Southeast Asia and Latin America were also key to accelerating agricultural growth and food self-sufficiency.
Thursday’s meeting was the first coordinated group visit by the four directors-general/regional directors and one deputy director general of CGIAR for Africa to a financing partner and came two days after Dr Adesina hosted a visit from United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during which the head of US diplomacy praised the bank for the exceptional efforts it is undertaking to help Africa feed itself and the rest of the world.
The leaders focused on securing long-term financing for research activities and for CGIAR to enhance its effectiveness across the continent. They also discussed capacity building for country-based national agricultural research services partners, young scientists and extension workers, and private-sector seed growers to produce certified seeds.
The Bank played a key role in the process of reforming CGIAR to make its work relevant and sustainable in Africa.
The Bank President, Dr Adesina, said: “I was pleased with the reforms at CGIAR, and we must ensure that it is held accountable for results which must be at scale. We must unlock Africa’s agricultural potential and deploy technologies to millions of African farmers. CGIAR is central to that.
“I have made agriculture central to the work of this bank and central to the future of our continent.”
Dr Adesina added that the African Development Bank, with the approval of its board of directors, could consider including CGIAR in its long-term lending programme to countries:
“CGIAR leaders have local knowledge, experience and networks and are better placed to work with national institutions to combat climate change and increase productivity and food security.”
The Bank is also keen to work with the consortium to expand its work on capacity development for young scientists and farmers.
The delegation expressed their readiness to assist the Bank’s regional member countries to implement the outcomes of the Dakar 2 Food Summit(link is external), which the Bank, the African Union, and the government of Senegal jointly convened. The January 2023 summit was attended by 34 Heads of State and Government, 75 ministers, and heads of development partners. To date, it has mobilised over $70 billion in an unprecedented global effort.
Leading the delegation, CGIAR Regional Director for Continental Africa and Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Dr. Simeon Ehui said: “The African Development Bank has been a long-standing partner of the CGIAR in providing technology. We are confident that the African Development Bank’s support will continue and increase.”
The Director General of the AfricaRice Centre and CGIAR Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Dr Baboucarr Manneh, commended the African Development Bank for continuing to support the institution with rice-based technologies for farmers:
“The Bank’s support for the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) varieties has led to the expansion of rice production in some African countries. We now have more than two million hectares of rice,”.
Dr Manneh added that the Bank has also supported AfricaRice through the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Rice Compact, which has greatly impacted food productivity in many countries on the continent.
TAAT is a proven approach to scaling up technology. It is delivering significant results for wheat in Ethiopia and Sudan and for maize in Kenya and southern Africa. Following the success of TAAT phases I and II, the African Development Bank President announced that the Bank plans to roll out phase III.
The African Development Bank, together with the AfricaRice centre, recently launched the $650 million Regional West Africa Rice Development (REWARD) programme in 15 West African countries. The programme will involve one million farmers cultivating up to 750,000 hectares of land to produce 53 million tons of rice over five years.
Regional Director for Central and West Asia and North Africa, CGIAR, and Director General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Aly Abousabaa, spoke about the challenges in the North, where temperatures are rising. He highlighted how his centre is trying out a revolutionary rain induction system to help farmers increase yields.
Deputy Director General for Research and Development – Livestock Genetics and Feeds at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Siboniso Moyo, stressed the importance of increasing livestock productivity in Africa, and the complementary relationship between crops and livestock to ensure animals get good quality feed.
Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR), Dr Eliane Ubalijoro, spoke about the critical contribution trees must make to improving soil health:
“We also want to prioritise how we finance agriculture and transform smallholder farmers, leading to greater food security, improved nutrition, and increased biodiversity”.
The Women in Africa (WIA) organization invites applications for the Women for Zero Hunger Program, aiming to assist associations in combatting hunger and food insecurity across Africa.
Launched in 2016, WIA Philanthropy is the first international platform dedicated to the economic development and support of African women entrepreneurs. At WIA Philanthropy, they are convinced that Pan-African women contribute greatly, through their actions, to the change and impact they bring to the continent’s progress.
Stop hunger acts locally and sustainably for a hunger-free world. Created 25 years ago by Sodexo employees, Stop Hunger is a global non-profit network mobilized to eliminate food insecurity by leadership activities going beyond food aid, with a priority: empowering women.
The top 7 non-profit organizations will be pre-selected by WIA Philanthropy and Stop Hunger before being presented to the international jury of the program, which will select 3 associations.
Benefits
to be visible: to inspire, to be recognized, and to have more impact;
Prizes: Each of the 3 non-profit organizations will receive €10,000. At the end of the mentoring period, one of the three finalist associations will be chosen by the jury members on the basis of pre-established criteria and will be invited to the annual Stop Hunger evening in Paris to receive the Stop Hunger trophy. This will give the winning association extra visibility as a crowdfunding operation during the event.
Mentoring program: The 3 selected associations will take part in a 6-month personalised mentoring program run by Stop Hunger and WIA Philanthropy. This mentorship will not only help refine their skills and strategies but also strengthen their resilience and ability to overcome specific challenges they may face.
Eligibility Criteria
The program is accessible to nonprofit organizations with at least 3 years of experience
The association must be African or active in an African country
The association must work in at least one African Anglophone and/or Francophone country
Selection Criteria
Number of beneficiaries supported by the association
Quality of the “solution”
Scalability of the “solution”
Beneficiaries: the solution must primarily benefit women or girls
Applications are now open for the Lead2030 Challenge for SDG13
Deloitte is proud to support the Lead2030 Challenge for SDG13 for the third year in a row. Through this challenge they seek to empower passionate people finding meaningful and innovative ways of tackling climate change.
In line with Deloitte’s ambition to address climate change through ecosystem engagement, the challenge seeks to support scalable youth-led solutions that:
Reduce the impacts of climate change, and/or empower others to act on climate change
Address root causes of the issue
Demonstrate ability to drive impact and potential to scale
Collaborate with others to accelerate or broaden impact
Utilize innovative approaches.
The challenge is open to young people from social enterprises, non-profits, or community organizations.
They are looking for bold solutions that reduce impacts of climate change and/or empower others to act on climate change. Examples of solutions may include behavioural change, technology solutions or scaling of technology solutions, education, nature-based solutions, community actions or collaborations.
Areas
The solutions should drive impact in at least one of the following areas:
Actively contribute to carbon reduction, carbon sequestration, and/or the transition to clean, renewable energy
Support or empower local people who are undertaking climate action to improve their community, strengthen resilience and limit the effects of climate change
Promote meaningful collaboration across stakeholder groups such as communities, businesses, and governments, to advance climate change solutions and resilience measures
Support initiatives that develop job skills, improve educational outcomes, and provide access to opportunities within the green economy
Limit the negative human, environmental, or societal impacts brought on by climate change
Prize
The winning solution will receive:
Sponsorship to participate in the One Young World Summit 2024
12 months of mentorship from a team of Deloitte professionals and partners. The mentorship team will work to accelerate your solution based on the needs of your initiative or organisation, such as:
Aligned: Evidently aligned with the SDG13 challenge.
Youth-led: Founded by a person aged 18 – 30.
Focused: Well-structured time horizon, identified key stakeholders and beneficiaries, and proposed outcomes that are reasonable and well thought out.
Proven: Solution is readily available, being piloted, implemented, or scaled
Impactful: Solutions must have a positive social impact, for example, generating educational outcomes, employment opportunities, or developing skills.
Measurable: Solution’s impact in society must be adequately measured and/or be measurable.
Financially viable: Must be able to achieve efficiency and to survive independently through the resources they generate and/or the investments and donations they attract.
Scalable: Potential to grow impact after expanding in scope or size and/or into other regions.
Technologically feasible: Must rely on proven or readily available technology (if technology is relevant to the solution).
Cocoa and chocolate production is a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s a driving force behind some of the world’s most powerful food companies, including Nestlé, Mars, and the Ferrero Group.
These massive brands have made chocolate an everyday item that most of us take for granted, but the very existence of the chocolate industry is nothing short of remarkable when you consider its origin.
Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, the fruit of cacao trees. These trees can only grow in very specific conditions; they need hot temperatures, high humidity, and lots of water. This type of tropical climate is only found within a narrow stretch of the planet, around the equator.
The taste of cocoa varies by country, but you’re unlikely to experience that variety because it mostly comes from the same place. While you can get some cocoa from Central America or South Asia, it’s West Africa that dominates the industry.
The world’s leading cocoa-producing country by far is Côte d’Ivoire (frequently anglicized as the Ivory Coast).
According to Statista, Côte d’Ivoire produced 2.2 million tons of cocoa beans in 2022, nearly three times as much as the world’s second-largest producer — neighboring Ghana — which put out 750,000 tons.
Over a quarter of Côte d’Ivoire’s population relies on cocoa for a living, but they reap just a tiny fraction of the chocolate industry’s colossal profits.
Now, a growing movement is fighting for farmers’ rights, and it could drastically change the cocoa industry.
Côte d’Ivoire runs on cocoa It’s impossible to overstate how important cocoa is to the people of Côte d’Ivoire.
In an interview with The Guardian, N’Zi Kanga Rémi — who governs the Adzopé Department just north of the nation’s largest city, Abidjan— explained that virtually every aspect of life in Côte d’Ivoire is dependent on a robust cocoa industry.
“My education was funded by cocoa! Our houses are built with cocoa! The foundations of our roads, our schools, our hospitals is cocoa! Our government runs on cocoa! All our policy focuses on sustaining cocoa!” he declared.
Farmers in Côte d’Ivoire grow and harvest raw cocoa beans, but they’re largely excluded from the chocolate production process. Although cocoa is the defining ingredient in chocolate, some giant brands often undercut its value.
The actual cocoa percentage of chocolate can vary significantly, and manufacturers may use minimal amounts to stretch their supply for the most products (and profit). Ultimately, it’s the companies that sell the finished product that reap the real rewards.
Most of the cocoa produced in Côte d’Ivoire gets exported to Europe, where the largest producers are located. Few people in Côte d’Ivoire even get to eat the fruit of their labor.
The average citizen eats only about a pound of chocolate per year, while the Swiss, who are the world’s leading chocolate consumers, eat about 22 pounds annually (via World Population Review). The average American eats 10 pounds per year
Isaac Sesi posing for a picture while holding the GrainMate moisture meter in Accra Ghana. Photo Courtesy: Richard Akakpo
Sesi Technologies, an agricultural technology firm, focuses on creating cost-effective, technology-driven solutions for farmers. The company’s flagship product, the GrainMate, is a grain moisture meter designed to help those handling grains effortlessly gauge the moisture content, thereby minimising post-harvest losses.
Isaac Sesi picks up a small bucket of maize to demonstrate the latest iteration of his moisture-measuring device. After powering the device with batteries, he presses a button, bringing up a white screen that displays various grain options for testing. He chooses the maize category and presses another button to initiate the reading. Sesi is demonstrating the most recent model of the GrainMate moisture meter, a device he developed to combat food loss in rural farming communities.
“Moisture content is one of the physical quantities that are essential in determining the quality of your end product, so we have come up with the GrainMate to make it easy to know how much moisture content you have in your product,” Sesi explains.
As a young man from a farming community in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Sesi became familiar with the challenges of storing grain the hard way, witnessing the difficulties his parents and other farmers experienced when trying to store their farm produce. He dedicated his academic career to finding a solution to this food loss.
His first iteration of the device was completed in 2018. The idea was to help farmers, aggregators, feed producers and anyone in the grain value chain to easily measure moisture content in their grain before storage, feed preparation or processing.
“One aspect of food security is in the process of being able to reduce or mitigate post-harvest losses because 30% of the food that we produce is lost … If we can cut down on these losses, that will bode well for our food security because the food that is being lost is food that can feed other people,” Sesi says.
Currently, Sesi Technologies’ GrainMate is less expensive compared to other, imported, moisture meter brands.
Sesi’s company offers two models. One is for regular grains, which is sold at 800 Ghanaian cedis (about US$65) while a second model extends to high-value commodities such as shea nuts. That version costs 1,000 Ghanaian cedis (about US$83).
Sesi graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and used his final year research project to come up with the GrainMate.
“In Ghana, with research, you just finish and put it on the shelf so you move on with your life but we thought that we developed something pretty good so we wanted to make it beneficial to farmers so I started Sesi Technologies to commercialise the output of my research at KNUST,” Sesi says.
The company’s breakthrough came with a sale of 150 of the devices. “Sesi Technologies was initially financed through a large pre-order by an international non-profit. This gave us the funds we needed to produce our first 150 units and hire our first employee,” the entrepreneur said in a previous interview.
Since then, Sesi has depended on revenue from sales of moisture meters and other services, while his company has received funding from a range of sources.
“We started with no money, absolutely no money. We just started by trying to commercialise this technology. How we were able to manufacture our first batch was that we got some pre-orders so we asked the client to pay for 70% so that we could use it to finance the initial inventory,” he says.
Determined to reach as many farmers as possible, Sesi participated in various start-up support programmes. He emerged as the overall winner of the GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize, an award for African agri-food innovators and entrepreneurs who are developing solutions for the agriculture value chain, in 2019.
“We won the overall US$50,000 prize.”
This prize helped him to scale both production and human resources.
“We have about 25 people in our team and that tells you that our wage bill every month is substantial and we’re making progress. We also have our field team who are in charge of providing services that we provide to farmers,” he explains.
Over 5,000 farmers have now tried out the device, although uptake has been slower than Sesi and his young team anticipated. “There’s very slow adoption to new technology and so we have not seen the kind of rapid adoption that we are looking at.”
However, feedback from the current pool of users keeps Sesi and his team motivated.
“For instance, poultry farmers use our device to check the moisture content of the different components of the feed before they put it together. When they do that they tell us that once they know the moisture content they see the quality of the feed is high, productivity is high and their birds don’t suffer from diseases because our device helps them.”
In an earlier interview with How we made it in Africa, Sesi said his biggest mistake was underestimating how long it would take to build the product. “We were new to building commercial hardware products and we didn’t anticipate all the challenges we would face along the way. This led to us overpromising our biggest customer who had made a huge bet on us. It almost caused our downfall. Now we know better.”
Sesi is optimistic about growth and is eyeing a local manufacturing facility employing skilled engineers to increase production capacity and push mass adoption of the GrainMate device.
“In the end, the goal is to be able to produce and assemble more,” he says.
Rice imports to Ghana fell by about 45.34% between 2021 and 2023, data from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has revealed.
In 2021, the total rice import was estimated at 805,000 metric tons (MT). It fell to 650,000 MT in 2022 and subsequently to 440,000 MT in 2023.
This reduction, according to various stakeholders in the industry, could be attributed to increases in import taxes and the reversal of the benchmark value discount policy on some selected imported products including rice into the country.
Farmers over the years have lamented about the lack of buyers for harvested rice in warehouses across the country and price disparities on the market as a result of cheap smuggled foreign rice brands.
To make up for the shortfall in the overall national rice supply, the report said Ghana must produce 1.0 million metric tons of rice locally to be self-sufficient. This will help save the nation about $500 million in import expenditure annually.
To empower local production, the government decided to ban cereal exports from September 2021 to September 2022, which was to ensure price increases and market availability of local rice.
This was after Ghana’s import bill exceeded $10 billion annually (comprising of rice, fish, poultry, and palm oil).
According to Agriculture Research for Sustainable Development (CIRAD,2007), Ghana’s rice self-sufficiency ratio declined from 38% in 1999 to 24 percent in 2006, but increased to about 43% in 2020.
This discovery, the report said, calls for more efforts to make the local rice value chain competitive to drive growth and economic transformation.
Government launched PFJ in 2017
In 2017, the Government of Ghana launched its flagship policy, the Planting for Food and Jobs which was to modernize agriculture, improve production efficiency, and achieve food security, and profitability for farmers. The second Phase of the policy was further launched in July 2023 to leverage information technology to avoid the key pitfall in the phase one of the PFJ.
The PFJ summarily targeted a significant increase in agricultural productivity and pursued a value-addition strategy, aimed at rapidly ramping up agro-processing and developing new and stable markets. However, critics say the programme has been a failure as food inflation rose to over 50 percent last year forcing the Ministry to transport food from rural areas to cities to mitigate the impact.
The government plans to provide 34,682 metric tons of seeds to farmers in 2024.
