Ghana is staring down another bumper harvest season, but the post-harvest script is likely to remain unchanged: abundance followed by waste. At the heart of the crisis is not just a lack of effort, but a misguided focus.
While policy conversations and investment ambitions remain fixated on large, centralized agro-processing plants, a quieter, more practical solution is being overlooked, and Ghana’s private sector is missing the cue.
According to Dr. Frank Ackah, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Crop Science, University of Cape Coast, the nation’s preoccupation with mega-factories has left farmers without timely, local solutions to preserve their produce.
“We keep dreaming of large-scale processing plants that may take years to build, if they are ever completed,” he said. “Meanwhile, mangoes are rotting today.”
His solution? A shift in strategy, away from flagship factories and toward decentralized, small-scale processing units that can meet farmers where they are. “In every district, even in every community, someone should be able to bottle tomato paste, dry okro, or preserve mango pulp,” he argued. These low-cost, community-based technologies, from solar dryers to mobile canning machines, could radically reduce post-harvest losses if adopted at scale.
But the bottleneck isn’t only technical, it’s also commercial. “Why is it so hard to find a mason jar in Ghana?” he asked, highlighting the lack of locally available preservation tools. He believes entrepreneurs should see this as an untapped business opportunity: supplying rural households with basic food preservation kits, offering mobile bottling services, or distributing small-scale drying equipment.
Dr. Ackah emphasized that large-scale processing has its place, but it cannot be the default solution in a country where transport, electricity, and cold chain infrastructure remain unreliable. “If a farmer has to drive five hours to reach a processing plant, the food is already spoiled,” he said.
For Ghana’s private sector, especially agri-tech startups, equipment suppliers, and food entrepreneurs, the message is clear: big isn’t always better. The fastest way to save food is not to build bigger factories, but to enable smaller ones to multiply. “The future of agro-processing in Ghana,” Dr. Ackah concluded, “will be won at the community level, or lost in the fields.
