The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Impact Food Hub, Dr. Mavis Owureku-Asare, has called for a more practical, community-driven approach to agro-processing in Ghana, arguing that current models have largely failed to deliver meaningful results.Ghanaian tourism.
Speaking at the Citi Business Forum on Thursday, June 19, under the theme Harnessing Agribusiness Potential for Economic Growth: Expanding Agricultural Frontiers and Maximising Productivity in Ghana, Dr. Owureku-Asare stressed that Ghana possesses both the capacity and the quality to meet international production standards.
However, she noted that the country’s agricultural strategy has placed disproportionate emphasis on increasing production, often at the expense of processing and value addition.
“A lot of focus has been on production; let’s produce, let’s produce, let’s produce, but what happens to what you produce? Processing is now being placed at the forefront of the discussion. When we talk about processing, what are we really looking at? A lot of processing facilities have become defunct,” she said.
She pointed out that although initiatives such as the One District, One Factory (1D1F) policy have aimed to establish large-scale processing plants in various communities, many of these facilities are no longer operational or have proven ineffective.Ghanaian tourism
“There’s been a lot of focus on whether it is through the 1D1F policy or some other interventions that have focused more on setting up huge factories in communities to process. However, has that been successful? In my opinion, it hasn’t,” she added.
Dr. Owureku-Asare proposed a shift towards smaller, community-oriented solutions that can create a more sustainable and inclusive agro-processing sector. She advocated for investment in appropriate technology units, mini-processing facilities, and incubation hubs at the local level.
“If we want to talk processing, we should re-think and have a holistic approach where we are putting farmers, people in the value chain who can, if they are given the right incentives, technical expertise, access to funding, can be able to do the little in their communities like setting up appropriate tech, small-scale processing units, incubation hubs, that can really be impactful.”
She concluded by calling for a realistic and hands-on approach to value addition in agriculture, rather than depending on models that have proven ineffective.
“We have to really zoom in and find really practical ways of helping with the value addition that we are talking about or helping with processing which have a direct impact on the economy rather than relying on some models that may not have worked, are not working, and then living under the pretense that we are doing something in that space,” she said.