General

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

You can learn a lot about people by analysing, for instance, how they eat. Not just what they choose, but when they order, how much they spend, and how often they return. Recently, during my postgraduate studies in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in Austin, I had the chance to study a real-world dataset from a food delivery platform in New York. The numbers didn’t shout. But they told a quiet, powerful story. It was an assignment designed to build foundational data analysis skills. However, as I worked through it, I kept thinking about ‘Order and Eat’, my own mobile food business here in Ghana. Although it is FDA-registered, I shut it down temporarily, until I could either run it better or find someone who could manage it more effectively.  In this assignment, I observed behaviours that felt familiar. I noticed customers who weren’t so different from ours. And I realised that what began as a case study was in fact a window into how we might operate better food businesses at home in Ghana. The Weekend Effect One pattern stood out immediately. Nearly three-quarters of all orders were placed on weekends. People were opting for American, Japanese, and Italian dishes. These weren’t quick weekday bites; they were meals that people sat down to enjoy, often shared and indulgent. This suggests that food delivery thrives most when people feel unhurried. They aren’t chasing deadlines or battling traffic. They’re unwinding. This has shaped how I think about scheduling for Order and Eat. Fridays through Sundays are no longer just part of the week. They are a rhythm. We have to plan our menu around them, preparing higher-demand ingredients in advance and using WhatsApp to send out quiet nudges to regulars. The numbers made it clear. Your best sales often happen when your customers are at their most relaxed. Who’s Spending More Than You Think Another detail stood out. Almost a third of the orders within the dataset in this assignment crossed the twenty-dollar mark. These weren’t one-off splurges. They were part of a steady flow of higher-value transactions. That matters. Too often we assume that most customers are watching every cedi. And while many are, some are not. Some are prioritising convenience, quality, or the joy of a particular meal. In Ghana, this segment exists, even if it doesn’t always advertise itself. I’ve seen it with Order and Eat. There are customers who consistently choose the more premium options, who never ask about delivery charges, and who quietly place repeat orders. When this happens, we have to start testing small add-ons just for them. A surprise dessert. A reusable food pack. These are simple things, but they build loyalty in quiet ways. If you run a small business, it is worth asking yourself who your highest-spending customers are and what kind of experience they are having. Are you treating them like everyone else, or are you giving them a reason to keep coming back? Speed Isn’t Everything There’s a widespread belief that faster delivery always means happier customers. But the data I worked on challenged that. Orders that were delivered quickly didn’t always earn better ratings. And the difference between five-star and three-star reviews had little to do with how fast the food showed up. That was a reminder. Satisfaction is about more than speed. It is about whether the food arrived in good condition, whether it tasted fresh, and whether the packaging felt intentional. For many of us in Ghana, where delivery times can be affected by factors outside our control, this is actually good news. We can’t always deliver faster. But we can deliver better. So, we have to start focusing more on consistency. Double-check packaging before dispatch, make follow-up calls on first-time orders, and even include small notes when we have the time. The goal is to shape the full experience, not just beat the clock. Loyalty is Quiet Until You Listen According to the data, one customer placed thirteen orders, while four others placed between eight and ten. These were not corporate bulk orders, but rather individual customers using the platform repeatedly. Yet, there was no mention of loyalty rewards or special offers for them in this assignment. This is a lesson many of us overlook. Not all loyal customers are loud. Some don’t leave reviews. Some don’t tag you on social media. But they come back. Again and again. If you’re not tracking their behaviour, you may never realise just how important they are. So start tracking basic customer behaviours. Nothing fancy. Just a spreadsheet with names, order frequency, and preferences. It will help us know who to thank, who to offer a new dish to first, and who to message when something goes wrong. Loyalty is built in moments, not marketing campaigns. Only a Few Vendors Stand Out Out of nearly 180 restaurants in the dataset, only four met the platform’s criteria for promotion: at least fifty ratings and an average score above four. That was startling. It showed how rare consistent quality and customer engagement really are. In Ghana, where digital food marketplaces are growing, the same problem exists. A lot of vendors get listed, but few are truly dependable. Many shine for a week and fade the next. The food platforms promote whoever brings in volume for them, not necessarily whoever delivers consistent quality to the customers. There’s an opportunity here. If you’re a vendor and you can maintain high standards, gather regular feedback, and respond quickly to issues, you can rise above the noise. And if you’re running a platform, it’s worth thinking about how your algorithm promotes vendors. Are you rewarding consistency and satisfaction, or just sales spikes? The Small Percentage That Can Ruin Your Brand Just over 10% of orders in the case study took more than an hour to deliver. This is not a majority. Not even close! But they still matter. These are the orders that frustrate people.