The Ministry of Trade and Industry has unveiled an initiative aimed at strengthening the competitiveness and sustainability of Ghana’s industrial sector. The programme, dubbed the Feed the Industry Program, seeks to address one of the most critical challenges facing local manufacturers: the shortage of raw materials.
Speaking on the initiative, Trade and Industry Minister Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare highlighted the urgency of the issue, noting that “a lot of companies that run factories are operating at only 30% of their installed capacity. And some of them, the reason is not even finance. They have finance, they have market, but they don’t have raw materials.”
To tackle this challenge, the government says it has secured 40,000 acres of land from the Yeji Traditional Council to support large-scale commercial contract farming. The initiative is designed to ensure a steady supply of agricultural raw materials for industries such as food processing, beverages, and textiles.
The programme also targets non-agricultural raw materials, including metals and rubber. The Ministry of Trade and Industry secured a restriction on the export of non-ferrous scrap metals, a move aimed at ensuring these critical materials remain available for local manufacturers. “We have agreed with stakeholders that aggregators should sell to local manufacturers so that we get raw materials to feed our industry processes,” Minister Ofosu-Adjare explained.
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) is also working on developing land banks to support industrial production, providing businesses with access to land for cultivating crops and other raw materials critical to manufacturing.
Ghana’s industrial sector has long struggled with underutilized capacity, often due to inconsistent raw material supply. Guaranteeing the availability of essential inputs, the Feed the Industry Programme is expected to increase production efficiency, create more jobs, and reduce the country’s reliance on imports.
The government also says the programme forms part of its industrialization agenda, which emphasizes value addition, domestic processing of raw materials, and stronger linkages between agriculture and industry, helping to position Ghana as a competitive hub for manufacturing in West Africa.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry plans to closely monitor the programme’s implementation, with ongoing consultations with industrialists, farmers, and other stakeholders to resolve any operational challenges and ensure that the objectives of enhanced competitiveness and sustainability are met.
