President-Elect John Mahama Announces Renaming of Ministry to Focus on Agribusiness
News Hub Creator18h
President-elect John Mahama has revealed that his government will rename the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to better align government policy with the needs of the agricultural sector. The new name, the Ministry of Food and Agribusiness, is aimed at concentrating on value addition and agro-processing to address challenges of food security in Ghana.
According to Ghana web, Mahama stressed the need for modernizing the agriculture sector using technology. “We have not exploited our potential in agribusiness,” he said. “We always encourage farmers to farm and provide them with subsidized fertilizers and all that. But once the farmer is left to himself, there’s nobody to buy the produce or add value to it.”
To tackle this issue, Mahama explained that the orientation of the Ministry of Agriculture would change significantly. “It will now be called the Ministry of Food and Agribusiness because we want to emphasize the agro-processing end of the agricultural value chain,” he said. “People will be encouraged to set up factories to buy the excess cassava that we have, produce cassava starch, cassava flour. That’s an area we are going to look at.”
He added that the incoming National Democratic Congress (NDC) government will also support young entrepreneurs in agriculture to boost their operations. “We want to create a direct value chain between Ghana and the markets outside,” Mahama said. “Currently, we export raw cashews, but it’s possible to process those cashews ourselves, brand them as Ghanaian cashews, and export them. These cashews are bought raw, taken to India, processed, and shipped to Europe and America. We can short-circuit that and create a more direct value chain.”