General

“Garbage in, garbage out.” But in today’s digitised economy, that phrase underestimates the problem. Dirty data is more than a nuisance. It’s a silent threat that can sabotage strategies, undermine innovation, and cost organisations millions without a single alarm bell ringing. Yet many businesses, even those that champion digital transformation, still treat data integrity as an afterthought. And by the time they realise the impact, the damage has often compounded beyond easy repair. Let’s unpack the dangers of dirty data and why it’s time we start treating data hygiene with the same seriousness as financial controls or cybersecurity. WHAT IS DIRTY DATA? Dirty data refers to information that is inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, duplicated, or outdated. It takes many forms: Misspelt names or incorrect entries in customer databases. Duplicated records, such as the same supplier listed twice with slightly different spellings. Outdated information, like an employee’s old job title still appearing in internal systems. Incorrect data types, such as text in a numeric field. Missing values, for example, sales transactions with no timestamp or customer ID. These errors might seem trivial to many. But when they spread across supply chains, financial models, marketing campaigns, or compliance systems, they distort reality, and distorted decision-making follows suit. THE HIDDEN COSTS & NUMBERS THAT SHOULD CONCERN YOU I wish I could cite Ghanaian surveys, but this also serves our purpose: In the United States, a 2021 survey by IBM estimated that poor data quality costs the US economy more than $3 trillion annually. On an organisational level, Gartner found that bad data costs businesses an average of $12.9 million per year in wasted resources, rework, lost opportunity, and reputational damage. But these aren’t losses that appear on a standard income statement. They hide in many forms. Inventory write-offs because of misaligned stock records. Poor customer retention due to mismatched or confusing contact histories. Failed AI or machine learning initiatives that were trained on flawed datasets. Regulatory fines for misreporting, especially in sectors like finance or health. In Africa’s fast-growing digital and financial ecosystems, where mobile money platforms, e-health records, and precision agriculture are all reliant on accurate inputs, the stakes are even higher. Dirty data can directly harm development outcomes. A REAL-WORLD CAUTIONARY TALE Consider the case of a global retailer that launched a loyalty campaign using data from its customer database. It was meant to be hyper-targeted with personalised messages, tailored offers, and location-based deals. Except that there is one thing out of place: the data was wrong. Some customers received offers for items they had already bought. Others got messages addressed to the wrong name, or worse, deceased family members. The campaign had to be pulled. Customer trust took a hit. The CMO resigned. What went wrong? The data team had warned about inconsistencies in the CRM. But in the rush to execute, nobody took the time to fix it. That’s the thing about dirty data; it often doesn’t scream. It whispers… until it explodes! HOW DIRTY DATA HAPPENS Data doesn’t become dirty on its own. It becomes dirty because of the systems, habits, and incentives surrounding it. Common causes include: Human error: Manual data entry is prone to typos, omissions, or formatting mistakes. Lack of validation rules: Systems that don’t enforce data standards allow garbage to enter. Siloed systems: Different departments maintain their own databases without synchronisation. Poor migration practices: Moving data between platforms without quality checks. Neglected maintenance: Over time, data decays. It means that people move, suppliers change names, prices shift, etc. Additionally, a less discussed factor is organisational culture. When data ownership is unclear, or when teams aren’t held accountable for accuracy, dirt accumulates. And then it becomes someone else’s problem until it becomes everyone’s problem. DECISIONS BUILT ON SAND The most dangerous consequence of dirty data isn’t operational inefficiency, but rather strategic misdirection. Think about the number of critical decisions that hinge on data, from market forecasts, investor reports, pricing strategies, risk models, HR policies, and a whole lot more. When that data is flawed, even the most well-intentioned leadership ends up operating from fiction. An NGO may misallocate aid based on outdated census figures. A fintech may over-lend to a region due to duplicated customer profiles. A factory may underproduce because its demand forecasting system is fed bad order history. A Government might… a lot can go wrong. The tragedy is that these entities often get everything else right. Intelligent people, solid frameworks, good intentions. But if their data foundation is flawed, the results will always be disappointing. DIRTY DATA IN THE AGE OF AI The rise of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and automation elevates the risk even more. Algorithms are only as effective as the data they are trained on. If your AI is learning from dirty data, it’s hallucinating oo. It’s not learning. A predictive maintenance system that flags machinery at risk of failure based on sensor data will produce false positives (or worse, false negatives) if the sensor readings are off by even a few points. A credit scoring model may unfairly deny loans to creditworthy individuals if their transactional data is incomplete or misclassified. This isn’t a future problem. It’s a now problem. The more decisions we delegate to machines, the more critical it becomes to ensure the data guiding them is clean, current, and contextually accurate. WHAT ORGANISATIONS CAN DO TO IMPROVE DATA HYGIENE? The fix isn’t as flashy as blockchain or AI but it’s far more urgent. Here are a few practical steps every organisation should be taking. Every dataset should have a clear owner, someone accountable for its accuracy, structure, and purpose. Without ownership, there’s no accountability. Don’t let bad data in the front door. Use dropdown menus, data masks, mandatory fields, and automated checks wherever possible. Use algorithms to spot and merge duplicate records. This is especially crucial in CRM, ERP, and e-commerce systems. Treat data hygiene like dental hygiene. Be routine about it, not reactive. Schedule periodic audits, cleansing, and enrichment cycles to maintain data integrity. People cannot fix what they do

Tomatoes from Burkina Faso, onions from Mali, rice from Vietnam, frozen chicken from Brazil. Ghanaian markets are flooded with food imports that, on paper, are cheap. They stabilise supply, offer variety, and often undercut local prices. But what looks like affordability on the surface hides a structural imbalance that threatens long-term food security in our beloved country. Let me clarify that imports are not the enemy. But dependency is. Food security isn’t just about producing enough. It’s about sovereignty over what we eat, resilience when global supply chains wobble, and the ability to feed a population without always relying on foreign reserves. When a country becomes overly dependent on external food sources, it loses control over its meals, as well as bargaining power, national pride, and the capacity to plan effectively for future shocks. AFRICA’S FOOD IMPORT PARADOX Africa imports approximately $50 billion worth of food annually, with projections to reach $90-$110 billion by 2025 if no significant changes are made. Last year, Ghana’s food import bill surpassed $3.5 billion, with some sources even reporting it approaching $4 billion, including staples we can produce locally. These include rice, poultry, cooking oil, sugar, and even basic vegetables during the off-season. The irony? Much of this import expenditure could be redirected towards strengthening local agricultural capacity and value chains. Why do we still import so much? Because imported food often seems cheaper, but this superficial affordability conceals longer-term, systemic costs that are more difficult to quantify. Job losses in local farming, processing, and distribution chains weaken rural economies and drive youth out of agriculture. Pressure on forex reserves forces governments to spend precious foreign currency on importing food rather than investing in domestic industries. Vulnerability to global price shocks, as seen during COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine war, and recent tensions between Israel and Iran, causes sudden food shortages and price increases. The loss of food culture and biodiversity happens quietly. When markets favour foreign varieties, local crops and cuisines start to vanish. This is how dependency creeps in. One container at a time, we outsource the backbone of our food system. Over time, we no longer grow what we eat, or eat what we grow. WHY ‘GROW MORE FOOD’ ISN’T ENOUGH Many policy responses focus on increasing agricultural yield: more fertiliser, improved seeds, mechanised farming. These are necessary interventions. But they address only the tip of the iceberg. Because even when we produce more, the rest of the system often fails: Post-harvest losses in Ghana range from 20% to 40%, especially for perishables like tomatoes, yam, and plantain. These losses result from inadequate storage, transport delays, and poor handling. Market linkages remain fragmented. Rural farmers often struggle to find buyers promptly or are compelled to sell to middlemen at exploitative prices. Storage infrastructure is inadequate. Without warehouses, cold chains, and silos, bumper harvests lead to temporary surpluses followed by shortages. Input dependency persists. Even when yields rise, they’re often driven by imported fertilisers, chemicals, hybrid seeds, or fuel for tractors, meaning any disruption to global supply chains threatens domestic output. Ergo, merely increasing productivity without fixing value chains can make our food systems more fragile, not less. CHEAP IMPORTS HOLLOW OUT LOCAL MARKETS Ghana’s poultry industry is one of the most cited examples of this hollowing-out effect. In the early 2000s, local poultry farms met over 90% of domestic demand. Today, over 80% of the chicken consumed in Ghana is imported, often from the US and the EU. These imports are typically frozen leftovers in my opinion, dark meat that is less preferred in export markets and sold at low prices due to foreign subsidies. Local poultry farmers struggle to compete. Not just on price, but also on access to processing facilities, veterinary support, and cold-chain distribution. The downstream effects? Loss of rural jobs, reduced food quality control, and rising health concerns over antibiotic use in imported meat. It’s a similar story with rice. Ghana produces quality rice in regions like Volta, Upper East, and Ashanti, yet imported varieties dominate supermarket shelves. The “Eat Ghana Rice” campaign has gained cultural traction, but local rice still faces obstacles like inconsistent packaging, branding, marketing, and logistics. These are competitive disadvantages that prevent local industries from scaling. FOOD SECURITY IS A VALUE CHAIN ISSUE Real food security is not just about farming. It’s about interlinked systems within various sectors that transform raw crops into reliable meals. Local value addition must become standard. For example, Ghana grows plenty of tomatoes, yet we import tomato paste. Processing capacity must rise to prevent waste and retain value. Agro-logistics is key. This includes cold rooms, real-time tracking, rural road networks, and last-mile delivery systems. Without these, urban markets cannot depend on rural produce. Finance access remains too shallow. Smallholder farmers and agro-SMEs need better tools like cooperative credit schemes, crop-indexed insurance, and grant-matched funding. Consumer culture is important. Ghanaians need to trust, prefer, and feel proud to buy Ghana-made food. That means investing in safety standards, attractive packaging, and public campaigns that reframe local food as premium, not inferior. From farm to fork, every link matters. And every break in the chain makes us more vulnerable. THREE POLICY PIVOTS GHANA CAN MAKE We can develop a National Food Balance Sheet. We must monitor, in real-time, what we grow, import, consume, and store. This data-driven mapping helps forecast shortages, guide investments, and make smarter trade decisions. It can also support targeted subsidies and emergency planning. We can modernise agro-industrial clusters. Various national agro-projects have laid foundational infrastructure. But we must build on that by integrating digital tools, shared R&D labs, quality control centres, and logistics services. Think of it as a contemporary ecosystem for agri-processing SMEs, not just isolated entities. We can link trade and nutrition policies together. Food policy is more than just filling stomachs; it concerns health and national stability. Ghana must ensure trade policies do not encourage ultra-processed imports while local crops decay. Tariff policies should support nutrition goals, climate resilience, and rural employment. CHEAP FOOD IS NOT THE SAME AS SECURE FOOD. The true cost of cheap

Every few years, a new administration in Ghana rolls out an agricultural masterplan with its own slogans, logos, and targets. We’ve had “Operation Feed Yourself,” “Youth in Agriculture,” “Planting for Food and Jobs,” and more. Each one comes with speeches, fanfare, and pilot sites. Yet when the dust settles, many farmers still wait for subsidised inputs, extension officers remain overstretched, and warehouses rust beneath the sun. The truth? It’s not always about money or technical know-how. Often, it’s because every new government resets the chessboard. Continuity is the rarest crop in Ghanaian agriculture. We plan with excitement but abandon with silence. As a result, the agricultural sector ends up more cluttered with defunct policies than with crops in the ground. How political cycles derail agri strategy Political discontinuity is a side effect of democracy. I recently had a conversation where I told those present that whatever comes with democracy, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We must protect our right to vote, our right to peace, and our belief in a functioning constitution, warts and all. Political discontinuity represents a structural flaw within the remarkable phenomenon we call democracy, where the majority of Ghanaians wish for one leader today and another leader tomorrow, as is our right. Nevertheless, Ghana’s development planning is excessively linked to electoral cycles. A new government enters, and suddenly, ongoing programmes are either renamed, repackaged, or quietly defunded. Extension officers are redirected. Donor partners become hesitant. Institutional memory is lost. Consider this: food distribution centres and grain silos have been built across the country, some since the 1980s. Yet many lie unused or repurposed. Not because they were poor ideas, but because follow-through was lost once the team that built them left office. In some cases, entire ministries shift focus midstream. Even worse, new appointees often lack access to the records and systems used by their predecessors. The digital continuity we need for monitoring, evaluation, and even simple procurement is suddenly absent. This issue often has nothing to do with the new administration’s operational capacities and expertise; as I mentioned earlier, it’s not always about money or technical know-how. In fact, more often than not, it’s a ticking timebomb left under the table for the new administrations to endure. After a couple of cycles, it then becomes the norm, a form of systemic amnesia that is triggered with every new swearing-in. The result is a sector trapped in rinse-and-repeat mode. Ambitious plans are launched, results are promised, and then silence follows. The toll on farmers and food systems For farmers, this means chronic unpredictability. One season, fertiliser subsidies are available; the next, they’re missing or delayed. Prices crash because of unregulated imports, then rebound wildly due to inadequate storage or transport. I adore watermelon smoothies. One day it’s ten cedis per melon; the next few weeks it’s thirty to forty cedis. I can never tell. Even my gɔbɛ is suffering because ripe plantain is in short supply now, and when I manage to get some, sheesh! Unionised farmer groups, originally intended to coordinate production and negotiate pricing power, have nearly disappeared in many regions or are no longer as effective. Without these structures, aggregation is weaker, market access is more challenging, and rural producers find themselves facing urban traders alone. Meanwhile, young people trained under previous agricultural initiatives graduate without a support system to assist them in accessing land, finance, or markets. As a result, momentum dissipates. Why? Well, “you belonged to that party, so…” Harsh, but true. Abeg, don’t punish me for expressing myself freely. I miss writing freely. I’m merely venting here about a gap in the system within a sector where I work; that’s all this is. Alright, moving on. Women farmers face even greater challenges. Despite being the backbone of Ghana’s rural labour force, they have limited access to land, extension services, and credit. When programmes fail, the fallout is often harsher for them, undermining both gender equity and food production. Food systems rely on consistency. Seeds, fertiliser, training, financing, harvesting, and transport must adhere to a predictable rhythm. When that rhythm is disrupted by political interference or insufficient funding, the entire cycle is adversely affected. It’s not a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of memory. Ghana is not lacking in vision. From the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ), many of these concepts are sound. The failure lies in execution and our inability to create apolitical institutions with lasting mandates. Other countries have learned this lesson. For instance, Rwanda shields its agricultural policy from political meddling by anchoring it in multi-year development compacts that endure beyond elections. Kenya’s devolution process has localised agri-financing, granting counties greater control while maintaining national coordination. Execution is never perfect but it’s a pretty solid example. I checked. Ghana, by contrast, tends to centralise plans but decentralise responsibility, a mix that makes accountability elusive. Everyone is in charge, so no one is. This is a broad statement yet largely accurate. Allow me to provide an example. Most national development strategies in Ghana, whether PFJ, One District One Factory (1D1F), or even parts of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), are designed and coordinated from Accra. Ministries hold the purse strings and steer the big picture. BUT, Implementation often falls to district assemblies, regional directorates, or local-level agents who don’t have full autonomy, reliable funding, or a say in the initial design. So when results are poor, there’s a finger-pointing loop between the centre and the ground. Three things that must change Institutional Independence: We need an autonomous Ghana Agricultural Development Authority (GADA) (or Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA)) with a protected budget, long-term strategy, and legal insulation from electoral whims. Similar to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), but focused on food systems. GADA or GIDA could be mandated to coordinate all agri-related initiatives, track data, ensure accountability, and serve as the institutional bridge across administrations. Data Infrastructure: A national digital agri hub that