Former minister woos investors in agric
The immediate past Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has invited investors from the international community in the agricultural value chain to take advantage of the opportunities created in the sector by the government.
Advertisement
“Ghana is ready to receive your investment in this era of our agricultural transformation,” he told the guests at the 2023 African investors council forum in Turkey last Tuesday.
The forum, organised by the African Investors Council Forum, was on the theme, “Agricultural development and investment opportunities in Africa (Ghana as a case study)”.
African unity
The theme sought to promote investment in African agriculture as a means to promote economic development on the continent.
Dr Akoto stated that the African Union’s Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) presented the continent with impressive opportunities for deepening intra-African trade and for advancing the prosperity of the continent overall.
“I want to challenge all African governments, the private sector and all of us here with 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 of the continent 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,” Dr Akoto said.
Collaboration
He admitted that there was a need for more collaboration and political will of all the international actors to provide a level playing field in global trade, “making it fairer and mutually rewarding”.
“Such collaboration is what we are discussing today in Turkey, spearheaded by the African Investors Council,” he added.
Dr Akoto, who is a flagbearer hopeful for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), stressed that it was imperative for each African State to emphasise the rapid growth of the agricultural sector, which relied more on internally generated resources, supplemented by foreign investment.
“I strongly believe agriculture can lift Africa out of poverty and assure not only food and nutrition security but also generate the necessary foreign exchange and domestic revenue for the development of the other sectors of our economies, including Industry, health, education and Infrastructure in the medium to long term,” the former minister added.
He said globally, there was an emerging economic order which was evident from the current economic challenges confronting the world.
“Food, renewable energy, water and big data will drive this new order; and I believe that Africa has the potential to lead this new order by strengthening all sectors of its economy and transforming agriculture sustainably to feed and enrich its people while contributing to the food and nutrition needs of the 9.7 billion people globally by 2050,” Dr Akoto further added.
He noted with concern that Africa was plagued with the difficulty in transforming its agricultural sector into a driver of sustainable development, food security and improved livelihoods, “and I admit that Africa has not done enough”.
“Over 200 million Africans continue to struggle with food insecurity.
This issue has been further deepened by COVID-19, the effects of climate change on agricultural production, political unrest across the continent, macroeconomic instability and the raging debt crisis that many African governments are facing,” he said.
Dr Akoto, however, said despite those obstacles, the agricultural sector offered immense and significant opportunities to transform Africa's economy from a net importer of food to a provider of food to the rest of the world.
Investment
He told the gathering that Ghana’s dream of using agriculture as the driver for economic development could be traced as far back as the 1920s,… “yet there has been an inadequate commitment to a full agricultural transformation that yields the needed significant results to lift the country from its economic woes”.
Dr Akoto, however, said over the last six years, the government laid the foundations for Ghana’s economic transformation through agriculture.
“I am confident that if the foundations laid are built upon, they will lead to a thriving sustainable agriculture to bring about prosperity for all,” he further said.
The former minister explained that the sector ministry made significant investments in farm inputs to increase agricultural productivity which raised incomes of farmers, and achieved national food security.
Planting for Food and Jobs
“To this end, the ministry instituted the widely touted Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme.
The government invested GH¢2.6 billion as a subsidy to procure and distribute 1.4 million MT of fertiliser and 93,192 MT of improved seeds to over 1.7 million farmers from 2017 to 2021.
“This investment generated farm output worth GH¢47.5 billion at the farm gate.
This is a huge economic rate of return on public expenditure under the Planting For Food and Jobs programme,” he touted.
