Ghana’s appetite for imported rice continues to place a heavy burden on the economy, with the country spending about GH¢6.8 billion (US$560 million) in a single year on rice imports alone. Added to other food imports, this import bill has sparked renewed calls for urgent interventions to boost local production.
While a number of rice milling companies have been established by private investors across the country, particularly in the Volta Region, many of these mills are currently operating below capacity, not because of lack of demand, but because they simply cannot get enough paddy rice to process.
In the Volta Region, several mills are underutilised, a situation industry players attribute to poor yields on most rice farms and the limited scale of cultivation. Despite heavy investment in processing facilities, the absence of reliable and sufficient raw material supply continues to stifle growth.
The development highlights a worrying paradox: while Ghana imports hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of rice annually, local factories remain starved of paddy, and farmers struggle with challenges such as low productivity, limited irrigation, inadequate mechanisation, and lack of access to credit.
Stakeholders say unless government steps in to urgently support rice cultivation at scale, the milling companies will not be able to sustain operations. This support, they argue, should include increased investment in irrigation systems, subsidised inputs, mechanisation centres, and structured financing for farmers.
Agriculture experts believe that scaling up domestic rice cultivation to feed these factories would not only reduce the import bill but also create thousands of jobs across the value chain, from farming and transportation to milling and marketing.
Experts say rice has the potential to be a game-changer for Ghana’s food security and industrialisation drive, but only if government works closely with farmers and processors.
As government pursues its agricultural transformation agenda, industry watchers say rice must be treated as a strategic crop, one capable of saving foreign exchange, strengthening the local economy, and ensuring food sovereignty.
