Below are some current developments on agriculture in Africa:
Agricultural Issues:
USAID Donates Vehicles to Northern Regional Coordinating Council
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) presented 12 Nissan pickup vehicles to the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC) in Tamale, Ghana, on January 8, 2016. The vehicles were distributed to nine metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies (MMDAs) and three regional departments in the Northern Region of Ghana to improve service delivery to their citizens. The Tamale Metropolitan, Savelugu, Central Gonja, Saboba, East Mamprusi, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Tolon, and West Gonja MMDAs and the Northern Region Health Directorate, Northern Region Environmental Health Unit, and the Northern Region Department of Social Welfare each received a vehicle. USAID/Ghana Mission Director Andrew Karas handed over the vehicles on behalf of the U.S. government. “These vehicles will enable local governments to provide more efficient and improved services to even their most vulnerable and remote citizens,” said Mr. Karas at the handover…
Food Security Threatened as Drought Looms
The Ghana Meteorological Service is warning of droughts that could lead to severe food shortages this year if appropriate steps are not adopted to tackle the threat. “We are expecting a reduction in the amount of rainfall especially during the major rainy season. We are anticipating that the rains will be erratic and we are going to have long drought spells and the rains will start late and end early”, a meteorologist Felicity Ahafianyo predicts. She cautions that, this will adversely affect agriculture especially because agriculture in Ghana is largely rain-fed. According to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), 90% of arable agriculture is dependent on rainfall. This means any reduction in rainfall as is being predicted will have dire consequences for the over 40% percent of Ghanaians involved in the agricultural activities with about 90% of those being small holder farmers …
GMOs to Crush Export Markets for Farmers across Ghana
Ghanaians have been fighting attempts at the imposition of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), by the Biotech industry and The Gates Foundation, into their food system for the last few years, including by taking the Government to Court on the issue. The public GMO debate has mainly focused on health and the environment, but hardly ever on the socio-economic impacts of GMOs. The socio-economic ramifications of the imposition of GMOs alone ought to be enough to ban its use in Ghana. The creeping intrusions of GMOs into Ghana’s economy, is likely to increase poverty, rather than diminish it; by increasing the penetration of transnational corporations into Ghana’s agriculture thus decreasing profit margins for small local farmers. Ghanaian agriculture cannot afford an economy that is designed for the benefit of external interests at the expense of Ghanaians. The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has already warned [3] of detrimental consequences on Ghana’s …
Farmers Asked to Ascertain Variety of Crops Before Planting
The Country Coordinator of the Support for Agricultural Research for Development of Strategic Crops in Africa (SARD-SC) Programme, Dr Kwadwo Obeng-Antwi, has advised farmers to ascertain the variety of crops before planting them, to avoid sowing industrial crops for human consumption. He indicated that some crop varieties might be good for human consumption, while others were meant for industrial purposes. For that reason, he said, knowing the characteristics of a variety would enable farmers to know their target customers and also allow them to determine the right prices for their produce. Speaking at a forum organised for maize farmers at Aframso, a predominantly maize-farming community in the Ejura-Sekyedumase District in the Ashanti Region, Dr Obeng-Antwi explained that most of the new maize varieties were developed for different purposes so “knowing that would greatly help the farmers in their activities.”…
Investors Shy from Plantation Development Business
Prospective foreign investors do not desire to venture into plantation development business, be it rubber, timber species among others because they see it as a long term investment with security risks e.g global climate change, Mr. Raphael Yeboah, Executive Director of the Forest Services Division of the Forestry Commission disclosed this at an end-of-year interaction with the media in Accra. Mr. Yeboah said the current spate of encroachment by illegal miners (galamseyers) and chainsaw operators whose activities continue to pose a major challenge to the Forestry Commission. Mr. Yeboah said forest management globally has become capital intensive and with the low capital base of the Commission, it will be difficult to deal with the situation. He said the strategy the Commission has adopted now in forest plantation development in the country …
Poultry Farmers Trained on Best Practices
The Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training in collaboration with the Skills Development Fund, has organised a four day programme for members of the National Poultry Farmers Association in the Eastern Region. The programme on the theme: “Bio-security and management for increased productivity and competitiveness,” was to enlighten poultry farmers on how to feed and manage their birds properly to increase productivity. Dr Michael Boateng, Project Coordinator, told the Ghana News Agency in Koforidua, that the programme is to train poultry farmers in bio-security, feeding, managing of birds and to prevent the spread of diseases from one farm to the other. The resource persons are from the Department of Animal Sciences of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology ...
New Vice Chancellor for University of Ghana
Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu was on Friday named as the successor to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ernest Aryeetey. He is a Professor of Entomology at the Department of Animal Biology and Conservation Science. Prof. Oduro Owusu is the current Provost of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences at the University of Ghana. Professor Owusu served as Head of Department of Animal Biology and Conservation Science, from 2008 to 2010 and followed that with tenure as the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science from 2010 to 2014. He also served as the Dean of the School of Biological Sciences from August to September in 2014 and Acting Dean, School of Biological Sciences from September, 2014 to June, 2015. In 1998, Professor Owusu was appointed lecturer at the Department of Zoology, University of Ghana (now Animal Biology and Conservation Science …
Reports/Articles
Is Ghana Making Progress in AgroProcessing? Evidence from an Inventory of Processed Food Products in Retail Shops in Accra
Andam, Kwaw; Al-Hassan, Ramatu M.; Asante, Seth Boamah; and Diao, Xinshen
One likely outcome of Ghana’s rising household incomes and increasing urbanization is a higher demand for processed foods. The question remains whether this expected higher demand will generate opportunities for growth in domestic agro-processing. This study assesses the performance of the agro-processing sector in Ghana through an inventory of processed and packaged food items in retail shops around Accra. The inventory shows: 1. The agro-processing subsector offers opportunities for domestic firms, with Ghanaian brands accounting for 27 percent of the items identified. 2. In addition to forming nearly a third of products identified, locally-processed products have penetrated diverse market segments with sales across a variety of retail outlets. 3. Regional imports of processed and …
Ghana’s Macroeconomic Crisis Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses
Younger, Stephen D.
Ghana is in the midst of a severe but not unprecedented macroeconomic crisis. This paper helps to evaluate the government’s policy options by (1) explaining the crisis’ causes, and (2) comparing it to previous macroeconomic crises and the policies that corrected them. Two large shocks are to blame for the crisis: an increase in the fiscal deficit of about 6 percent of GDP and a reduction in hydroelectric production that has not been replaced with thermal generation. This latter is more difficult to quantify, but may be as large as 4 percent of GDP. While large, Ghana has recovered from similar shocks in the past, and with luck, should be able to do so now. But this will require reversal of the large increases in the public sector wage bill that drove much of the fiscal shock …
Status of Agricultural Mechanization in Ghana: A Case Study of Maize Producing Farmers in Ejura/Sekyedumase District, Ashanti Region
A Taiwo, F Kumi - 2015
It is the aspiration of virtually every country in the world to achieve economic prosperity through the exploitation of her available resources to the optimum level possible without damaging the environment. In the case of Ghana, Agriculture is the basic industry and national policies have always aimed at achieving increased agricultural for self-sufficiency in food, and generate more foreign exchange resources with which to improve the standard of living of the farming community, especially and the entire country at large. The role of mechanization in enhancing agricultural productivity is well recognized. This paper reveals the status of agricultural mechanization in Ghana, especially among the small scale farming community, by presenting a case study of level of mechanization of maize production by farmers in Ejura/Sekyedumase district of the Ashanti Region. A survey was carried out in 12 operational areas within the 4 zones of the district where maize is …
The Effect of Insurance Enrollment on Maternal and Child Healthcare Use
Gajate-Garrido, Gissele; and Ahiadeke, Clement
Access to and use of health services are concerns in poor countries. If implemented correctly, health insurance may help solve these concerns. Due to selection and omitted variable bias, however, it is difficult to determine whether joining an insurance scheme improves medical care–seeking behaviors. This paper uses representative data for the whole country of Ghana and an instrumental variable approach to estimate the causal impact on healthcare use of participating in Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme. Idiosyncratic variations in membership rules at the district level provide exogenous variation in enrollment. The instrument is the existence of nonstandard verification methods to allow enrollment of children. Using the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey and a census of all district insurance offices, this paper finds that insurance membership increases the probability of …
Heterogeneous Impacts of an Unconditional Cash Transfer Programme on Schooling: Evidence from the Ghana LEAP Programme
R de Groot, S Handa, M Park, RO Darko, I Osei-Akoto… - 2015
The paper uses data from a quasi-experimental evaluation to estimate the impact of the Ghanaian Government’s unconditional cash transfer programme on schooling outcomes. It analyses the impacts for children by various subgroups – age, gender, cognitive ability – and finds consistent impacts. There are differences across gender, especially on secondary schooling, with enrolment significantly higher for boys 13 years or older. For girls, the effect of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is to improve current attendance among those who are already enrolled in school (across all age groups). The authors found a significant effect on the expenditure on schooling items such as uniforms and stationary for these groups, which helps to explain the pathway of impact because these out-of-pocket costs are typically important barriers to schooling in rural Ghana and most of Africa …
Impact of Agribusiness Labour on the Child Education in Cameroon
TN Gildas, IN Manu - International Journal of Agricultural Research, …, 2016
This paper aimed to assess the involvement of child labour in agribusinesses as well as the schooling pattern of children involved in these agribusinesses in Cameroon. For this study, some descriptive statistics and cross tabulations were computed using SPSS.20 and stata 13 software packages. The population of this study was made up of 51,190 individuals of both sexes that were concerned by the third Cameroon National Household Survey. The sample drawn from this population was constituted of individuals of age 5-17 years old, making a total of 17,550 children. The main results of this study revealed that agribusiness child labour was present everywhere in Cameroon and by both boys and girls. Children of all ages of the sample were concerned by the phenomenon and their level of education was essentially the primary. The impact of agribusiness child labour on education was positive because it helped the working and schooling children to provide means to finance their …
Variations in Trace Metal and Aflatoxin Content During Processing of High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF)
H Ofori, PT Akonor, NT Dziedzoave - International Journal of Food Contamination, 2016
Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is one of the most important root tubers in Africa and serves as a food security crop for millions of people on the continent. According to a report by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ghana (MoFA 2013) cassava ranks first among root crops in Ghana, with over 14 million MT of the crop produced in the year 2012. Customarily, cassava is largely consumed locally and does not return considerable amounts of foreign exchange. About 50 % of the roots are consumed fresh at household level, whilst the remainder is processed into other forms such as cassava chips and flour. Only 1 % of the cassava produced is used for industrial purposes. In recent times attempts have been made to add more value to cassava and also make it more useful as a raw material for industrial applications. One of the approaches has been to process the roots into unfermented flour for domestic and industrial uses. This flour, also known as High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) is …
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