A Senior Lecturer at the Department of Horticulture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Eli A. Gaveh, has urged the youth to view agriculture as not a burden but rather as an opportunity for them to meaningfully contribute to the growth of the Ghanaian economy.
“As a nation, we need dedicated and committed youth who will be able to transform the nation and build a stronger economy through agriculture for the benefit of all,” he said.
He said the agricultural sector in its current state could not run effectively if the youth were not actively involved, saying “as academia, we see the youth as key players in the whole equation of agriculture”.
Dr Gaveh made the remarks while addressing the Ghana Cocoa Innovations Hackathon 2026 event at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources auditorium, KNUST, last Wednesday, July 22, 2026.
It was organised under the auspices of KNUST together with the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and the Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, in collaboration with the Netherlands Embassy.
The event was on the theme: “Bridging the gap between industry and academia through youth-led innovation and entrepreneurship”.
As part of the event, 10 groups of students comprising six members in each group competed among themselves through presentations of innovative ideas and technologies that could transform the cocoa sector.
At the end of the contest, the group that came up with the idea to rehabilitate old cocoa farms and the establishment of a cocoa centre of excellence won the coveted prize. Each member of the group received a laptop.
Highest yield, ageing farmers
He mentioned that the highest yield Ghana recorded in cocoa production over the past 20 years was one million metric tonnes and said ever since, the nation had not been able to reach such a target despite many interventions introduced to shore up cocoa production.
The event
“We need to preserve the cocoa sector like gold and any other treasure. If we take out cocoa from the Ghanaian economy, we are going to crash the economy with its attendant consequences on the citizenry,” he stressed.
Dr Gaveh, who is also the Lead Organiser of the event, expressed concern that the average age of the Ghanaian farmer was currently about 60 years and stated that the nation could not rely on ageing farmers to run and transform the agriculture sector.
Entice youth
A Diplomat at the Netherlands Embassy, Naomi Tuintra, said they intended to use the programme to entice the youth to think about the cocoa sector innovatively due to ageing farmers.
“This will go a long way in giving young people the idea that there are opportunities in the cocoa sector that they could take advantage of to contribute to the sector’s growth,” she said.
She charged policymakers to make sure that young people benefited from available opportunities in terms of access to land, tools and equipment and other related services to improve agriculture.
The University Relations Officer, KNUST, Dr Daniel N. Bekoe, said the university had introduced entrepreneurship at all levels, especially in Artificial Intelligence, to enable the students to create jobs for themselves after completion.
For his part, the Provost, CANR, KNUST, Professor Dadson Awunyo-Vitor, underscored the need to stimulate entrepreneurship drive among students through innovation, saying, “any society that fails to innovate risks extinction”.
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