Ghana spent GH¢2.84 billion on frozen cuts and offal of fowl in 2025, emphasizing the scale of the import dependence the government is trying to reverse through its Nkoko Nkitinkiti poultry programme.
The figure made frozen fowl cuts the second-largest food product imported into Ghana during the year, accounting for 7.8% of the country’s GH¢36.46 billion food import bill. It was also about 10% higher than the GH¢2.58 billion recorded in 2024.
The persistence of such a large import bill comes as the government rolls out Nkoko Nkitinkiti, a flagship component of the Feed Ghana programme designed to increase domestic poultry production, create household incomes and reduce Ghana’s dependence on imported chicken.
The government has set a target to increase poultry self-sufficiency from approximately 12% to more than 75% by 2028. The programme is expected to distribute approximately three million birds to around 60,000 households across 276 constituencies, along with feed and technical support.
But the size of the import bill raises a question about whether distributing birds to households will be enough to materially change Ghana’s poultry trade balance.
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Under the programme, beneficiaries receive birds for meat and egg production, meaning household consumption is part of the intervention. In some communities, beneficiaries have reported keeping part of their birds for household consumption.
That creates a distinction between producing chicken locally and building a commercially sustainable poultry industry.
If beneficiaries consume the birds without retaining enough productive capacity to continue raising and selling poultry, the immediate benefit is improved household nutrition, but the longer-term effect on imports may be limited. The programme would need successive production cycles, reinvestment and market linkages for household-level production to translate into a sustained increase in domestic supply.
Government officials have emphasised the commercial purpose of the initiative, encouraging beneficiaries to raise the birds for income generation rather than consume them immediately and to treat the birds as productive assets rather than handouts.
Ghana’s imported frozen poultry is estimated to account for between 80% and 95% of poultry consumption.
That dependence also represents a sizeable market opportunity for domestic producers if they can overcome the cost and supply constraints that have made imported poultry more competitive.
The government has allocated GH¢244.99 million in the 2026 budget to the Poultry Farm-to-Table Project, while the wider Feed Ghana programme is intended to strengthen agricultural production and food security.
For the poultry industry, however, the challenge extends beyond putting chicks into households. Farmers need reliable access to feed, veterinary services, financing, processing facilities, cold storage and predictable markets. The government’s own medium-term agricultural plan identifies feed availability, veterinary support, poultry processing, aggregation and collective marketing as necessary elements for improving the sector’s profitability and resilience.
The import data suggest that demand already exists at scale. The focus now is whether the government’s strategy is sufficient to help Ghanaian producers capture more of that demand.
The 2025 trade statistics show that frozen fowl cuts alone accounted for GH¢2.84 billion in imports, while the broader trade report identified continued dependence on imported food products as one of Ghana’s structural vulnerabilities.
The programme’s real impact lies in turning the initial distribution of birds into sustained poultry production, higher household incomes and a larger domestic supply of chicken.
Investors and businesses can find opportunities further down the value chain, particularly in feed production, hatcheries, veterinary services, processing, cold-chain logistics and distribution. A sustained reduction in imports would require these businesses to expand alongside farmers rather than relying on household production alone.
Ghana’s poultry challenge, therefore, is not simply about getting more chickens into farms. It is about turning those chickens into a recurring domestic supply system capable of replacing a portion of the GH¢2.84 billion market currently being served by imports.
