In 2024 alone, Ghana spent over GH¢2.68 billion importing yemuadie, the popular local term for guts, bladders, and stomachs of animals, making it the second most imported food product by value, just behind processed cereal grains.
This might surprise many, especially given how central yemuadie is to local cuisine. Found in beloved dishes like abunubunu, fufu with light soup, and kokonte, these offal cuts are traditionally sourced from local livestock. Yet, data from the latest trade report show a growing reliance on imports to meet domestic demand, even for items once considered by-products of local meat production.
It’s not just yemuadie. Along with worked cereal grains (GH¢3.37 billion), frozen chicken cuts and offal (GH¢2.58 billion), and sugar (GH¢2.37 billion), these four staples account for 28.2% of Ghana’s total food import bill, which hit nearly GH¢39 billion last year.
This trend highlights a striking paradox: foods that are deeply rooted in Ghanaian culinary traditions are now increasingly sourced from foreign markets. The importation of yemuadie, a local term for animal stomachs and offal, suggests that the country is not just importing meat products, but elements of its own food heritage, often at a premium.
From an economic standpoint, the story takes on added complexity. Offal, once seen as low-value waste in global meat production, now represents a multi-billion-cedi segment of Ghana’s food import bill. In 2024, yemuadie alone accounted for nearly GH¢7 of every GH¢100 spent on food imports.
While this underscores growing domestic demand, it also points to underlying challenges in local livestock processing and supply chains. Despite the availability of raw materials, Ghana’s capacity to process and distribute these products at scale remains limited, presenting both a constraint and a potential avenue for future investment and reform.
