As 2018 comes to a close, we reflect on GSSPs accomplishments. Here are some of the highlights from the year. We hope you enjoy this recap and thank you for your interest and collaboration. Looking forward to another productive year in 2019!
Ghana’s cocoa industry is a key component of the agriculture sector and has achieved consistent growth in recent years. However, low global market prices, a lack of management transparency, and a shortage of younger farmers loom as major challenges, according to The Cocoa Coast: The Board-Managed Cocoa Sector in Ghana, a new book by IFPRI’s Ghana Strategy Support Program. The book focused attention on the industry’s successes in Ghana and stimulated critical dialogue on its problems and potential reforms. “By pushing this book [we hope] society can be awakened to the potential of cocoa for the nation as well as our farmers,” former Ghana President John Agyekum Kufuor noted at the book event in Accra. To read about the book’s launch events, click here. To read and download the book, click here.
This year GSSP partnered with the Ghana Association of Agricultural Economists (GAAE) on its second annual national conference from 9-10 August 2018 on the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) campus in Kumasi. Hosted by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness and Extension at KNUST, the conference brought together over sixty agricultural economists and agribusiness experts representing academia, research institutes and the private sector to present and discuss papers around the conference theme ‘‘Ghana’s Agriculture, Food Security and Job Creation”. In his keynote address, Karl Pauw, IFPRI Country Program Leader, challenged agricultural economics and agribusiness students and researchers to venture beyond studies narrowly focused on production technologies, firm efficiency, and profits to also reflect on the role of agriculture and agricultural policies in developing value chains, strengthening food systems, and contributing to poverty reduction, improved nutrition and economic transformation in a sustainable manner. For more about the event, read the blog post.
How to stimulate growth and development in Ghana’s agricultural value chains is of great interest to government and development partners. GSSP work examined the factors constraining the competitiveness of the Ghanaian vegetable sector are examined in a GSSP working paper Competitiveness of the Ghanaian vegetable sector: Findings from a farmer survey. Drawing from data from three surveys of wholesalers and producers, the study focuses on trade, production, profitability and marketing of tomatoes, onions, scotch bonnet peppers and carrots. In addition, our researchers undertook a study of value chain challenges in the nascent aquaculture sector. They find that growing consumer demand for tilapia provides a major opportunity but securing and sustaining the blue revolution in Ghana will require policy actions and institutional arrangements to attract investments into the sector, improve productivity and build resilience to disease on tilapia farms.
Ghana is in the midst of a food and nutrition transition, wherein undernutrition and food insecurity are steadily decreasing. However, pockets of chronic undernutrition remain is some parts of the country and new problems are arising related to overnutrition, especially in urban areas. A stakeholder event co-hosted by GSSP and the University of Ghana was held to kick off a new study on leveraging food systems to improve diets in Ghana. And a GSSP study on urban food systems found that imported processed foods are prevalent in urban food retailers. It is particularly striking that import dominance is seen even in traditional shops and smaller cities.
Results from a study on the impact of the devolution of agricultural functions to Ghana’s MMDAs was published in an IFPRI Discussion Paper and associated Policy Note. The study explains that, although Ghana has been committed to decentralization since the passing of the 1993 Local Governance Act, it typically has practiced deconcentration whereby local government is solely responsible for implementation and accountability is upwards to line ministries within the central government. The study explains some of the challenges of this approach, which are summarized in this blog post.
Gender roles have important implications for agriculture and food security and have been a key consideration in the discourse on agricultural development over the last few decades. Work on gender and agriculture by GSSP researchers was published in a journal article and summarized in this blog post. The work reassesses the validity of some commonly repeated facts about gender relations do not seem to hold true today in Ghana and elsewhere in the developing world.