A flagbearer hopeful of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has told world leaders and captains of industry to divert a chunk of their investments into Ghana and Africa’s agricultural sector for good returns.
Ghana and Africa, he noted, are the world’s biggest hope for global food security by 2050, hence an investment in the continent’s agricultural sector is the surest bet one can ever make on his or her investment.
He has therefore assured them of Ghana and for that matter the rest of Africa’s readiness to provide them with the conducive and enabling environment for their investment.
“Ghana and Africa are ready to receive your investment in this era of our agricultural transformation”, he noted.
Delivering his keynote address as the Special Guest of Honor at the African Investors Council Forum in Turkey on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, under the theme ‘Agricultural Development and Investment Opportunities in Africa (Ghana as a case study), Dr. Akoto said Ghana and Africa possess the greatest potentials to feeding 9.7billion people globally by 2050.
This, he said, could be achieved if Ghana and Africa are able to align themselves properly by strengthening all sectors of their economies and transforming agriculture sustainably, believing that the transformational drive could propel the continent to be the driving force in an emerging economic order in the areas of Food, Renewable Energy, Water and Big Data.
According to Dr. Akoto, despite the impacts of COVID-19 and the effects of climate change on agricultural production as well as political unrest across the continent, macroeconomic instability, and the raging debt crisis that many African governments face, the agricultural sector offers immense and significant opportunities for transforming Africa’s economy from a net importer of food to the provider of food to the rest of the world.
According to analysis by McKsiney, if agricultural development gets the necessary financial investment, smallholders across Africa could produce two to three times more cereals and gains. In turn, this would add 20% more cereals and grains to the current worldwide annual output of 2.6billion tones.
With a strong belief that Africa could become the food basket to the rest of the world, Dr. Akoto went on to challenge all African governments, the private sector and anyone who has a stake in the economic development of Africa, to explore a new strategy to unlock the wealth of the continent for the direct benefit of the people in a meaningful and sustainable way.
“It is time we stop perceiving Africa as a “potential” investment destination but as an “actual” investment choice for Regional Trade and Foreign Direct Investments. It is time to create more mutually beneficial opportunities for trade, investment and collaboration with the African continent. To achieve this would require collaboration and political will of international actors to provide a level playing field in global trade – making it more fair and mutually rewarding”, he asserted.
Zero in on Ghana as the best destination of choice for investors, the former Food and Agricultural Minister highlighted the strong foundation he has laid for the West African nation’s agricultural sector, combining policies with regulations to achieve sustained rapid economic growth.
“Under my tenure as the Minister for Food and Agriculture in Ghana, in 2019, I initiated the establishment of the Tree Crop Development Authority under an Act of Parliament, Act 1010. The Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA), established in 2020, seeks to coordinate and promote the development of six tree crops – cashew, rubber, oil palm, coconut, mango and Shea. The goal of the Authority is to develop, produce, and distribute the selected cash crop seedlings to farmers so as to produce and generate a combined potential of export earnings between US$6 to US$12 billion per year after 8-10 years of implementation. At their full development, the additional US$6 to US$12 billion per year in earnings can substantially increase the less than US$2billion annual earnings from cocoa, the current highest foreign exchange earner for Ghana for over a century”, he emphasized.
Dr. Akoto further took his audience through the establishment of the National Cocoa Rehabilitation Program which was designed to put in measures to support the private sector to scale up cocoa production, expand local cocoa processing, promote market expansion of the export of cocoa products into new markets and for vigorous promotion to boost domestic and international consumption.He also spoke highly of the construction of Greenhouse Training Centers with attached commercial units at Dawhenya, Akumadan and Bawjiase for the training of 537 youth in high-quality vegetable production.
“The creation of a Poultry Development Authority, Grains Development Authority (yet to be passed by Parliament) and the Horticultural Development Authority (at Cabinet) and a proposed legislation requiring all commercial banks to increase loanable funds to agriculture and its value chains are all veritable initiatives under my tenure to make the Agric sector the brain hub to achieve Ghana’s economic independence and in other words wean itself from excessive borrowing . The recent experiences from Ghana clearly indicate that prioritizing public resources to promote agriculture in general and the interest of smallholdings can yield very positive results in the effort to transform the Agricultural sector in African economies. These positive impacts open up new investment opportunities in agro-processing and other businesses down the value chain. Serving the burgeoning domestic urban and export markets should generate the foreign exchange and domestic revenues needed to fund industry, education, health, roads and other infrastructure”, he posited.
*Invest in women in agriculture*
Dr. Akoto, who is also a former two-time Member of Parliament for Kwadaso in the Ashanti Region said for agriculture to experience exponential growth in the African continent, much will depend on women who contribute to over 70% of food production.
He has therefore, charged African governments to prioritize investing in women in the agriculture sector.
