Ghana has rolled out many programmes to boost agriculture over the years, but despite all the big plans, farmers are still struggling.
Dr. Frank Ackah, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast’s Department of Crop Science, says the problem is not a lack of ideas, but a lack of coordination.
Speaking to The High Street Journal, he explained that the country’s agriculture sector is full of brilliant plans and pilot projects, yet they often run in isolation and fail to link up with each other.
“We keep launching new programmes without building on the old ones,” Dr. Ackah said. “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
According to him, ministries, district offices, and agencies often work separately, with little communication or long-term planning between them. This leaves farmers confused, support systems patchy, and resources wasted.
Dr. Ackah warned that this scattered approach makes it impossible to properly modernise agriculture, from mechanisation and irrigation to extension services and market support.
“You can’t modernise agriculture with disconnected policies,” he stressed. “If we want real change, the entire system must move in one direction.”
He believes Ghana needs a central body to coordinate agriculture the way the Ghana Health Service coordinates healthcare and the Ghana Education Service oversees schools. Such a structure, he said, would allow plans to be linked, resources pooled, and policies aligned across the country.
Without that, Dr. Ackah fears that Ghana will continue spending money on agriculture while seeing very little change on the ground, and farmers will keep bearing the cost of poor planning.
