Sir Sam Jonah, Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, has credited former Head of State General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong's Operation Feed Yourself campaign with boosting domestic food production and reducing Ghana's rice imports to zero in 1975 and 1976.
Speaking at the second edition of a lecture honouring Acheampong's legacy on Friday, November 13, 2026, Sir Sam Jonah said the programme demonstrated how national leadership could mobilise citizens to produce the food the country consumed.
He recalled that Acheampong had questioned why Ghana continued importing rice despite having the land, rainfall and water resources to produce it locally.
"Don't we have the land? Don't we have the rain? Don't we have the water bodies? What is wrong with us?" Sir Sam Jonah quoted Acheampong as asking during a review of his government's first budget.
The questions, he said, inspired Operation Feed Yourself, a national agricultural mobilisation campaign led by then Colonel Frank Bernasko.
The initiative involved traditional leaders and communities across the country, with government support including the provision of cutlasses, hoes, fertiliser and seeds at heavily subsidised prices, alongside investment in irrigation dams.
Sir Sam Jonah said the campaign delivered measurable results, with rice imports falling to zero in 1975 and again in 1976. Farmers in northern Ghana began exporting rice and tomatoes to neighbouring Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, while Tamale became known as "Rice City."
Beyond agricultural output, he said the programme created a sense of national participation. "For perhaps the only time in our history, the educated Ghanaian was proud to call himself a farmer," he said.
He also highlighted Acheampong's "Yentua" policy, in which Ghana repudiated some ninety million dollars of suppliers' credits deemed tainted by corruption.
"The Daily Graphic put it in one Akan word, in a headline this country has never forgotten: Yentua. We will not pay," Sir Sam Jonah recalled, noting that the bold stance forced creditors back to the table and secured a favourable rescheduling agreement in Rome in 1974.
He contrasted this with Ghana's recent default in 2022. "In 1972 the slogan was Yentua: we will not pay. In 2022 the honest slogan would have been Yentumi: we cannot," he said.
Sir Sam Jonah also credited Acheampong with taking controlling stakes in Ashanti Goldfields and other mining companies, opening senior management to Ghanaians. "I am a beneficiary of this man," he declared, noting that his own career at Ashanti Goldfields was made possible by the 1972 decree.
