He said the key nagging issues are food security, energy transition, youth employment, and infrastructure development.

Dr Adesina was speaking at the Leaders’ Breakfast Meeting which saw the launch of the Arab-Africa Financial Consortium and the celebration of the BADEA Prosperity Partnership which is commemorating its 50 years of Arab-Africa cooperation.

He said energy offered enormous opportunities for cooperation between the Gulf countries and Africa, adding that the Gulf countries were investing heavily in energy, especially in renewable energy, green hydrogen, and green ammonia, which could help Africa in its energy transition.

The President said Africa needed to unlock potentials for its green credentials and rare minerals as it held deposits of global reserves of critical minerals like 79 per cent of cobalt, 44 per cent of manganese, and 21 per cent of graphite, including lithium and copper.

Some other key areas he mentioned were the value of the electric vehicle industry and the battery energy storage system which would reach $57 trillion by 2050, therefore, Africa must explore the opportunities through the development of green metals industrial value chains, instead of the export of raw materials.

“The establishment of a 10,000-tonne lithium-ion battery pulsar factory in Africa will be three times cheaper than in the United States, Poland, or China.” Dr Adesina said.

The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) was established under the resolution of the 6th Arab Summit Conference at Algiers (28 November 1973). The Bank began operations in March 1975 to strengthen economic, financial and technical cooperation between Arab and African countries.

It is a financial institution owned by eighteen member countries of the League of Arab States (LAS) which signed its Establishing Agreement on 18 February 1974.

The Bank is an independent International Institution enjoying full international legal status and complete autonomy in administrative and financial matters. It is governed by the provisions of its Establishing Agreement and the principles of international law.

Under the patronage of the African Union Champion for Financial Institutions, the Arab-Africa Financial Consortium (AAFC) was launched to bring together a powerhouse of finance in both regions and the Consortium aims at establishing a club of leading multilateral financial institutions and development finance institutions in Africa and the Arab world.

Dr Sidi Ould Tah, President, BADEA, in espousing the contribution of the Bank over the last 50 years, said BADEA had been the only institution fully dedicated to the African continent to collaborate to foster development and strengthen historical, geographical and cultural ties between the two worlds.

He urged the two regions to deepen the partnerships to unlock the potential for sustainable growth, adding that both entities had an obligation to work to create a transformative agenda that would help Africa lead in economic, financial and technological advancement.

This is higher than the 17.4% it earlier predicted.

It also means inflation would remain outside the Bank of Ghana’s bound of 8%±2.

AfDB said the outlook is clouded by several factors.

These are the impact of fiscal consolidation under the post-Covid Programme for Economic Growth, the lingering effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, limited access to finance and foreign exchange, and global macroeconomic shocks.

However, it said prudent macroeconomic management policies could mitigate the risks.

Furthermore, it said the Consumer Price Index would narrow to 11.1% in 2025.

Meanwhile, the average consumer price inflation in Africa is estimated to have increased by 3.0 percentage points to 17% in 2023, from 14.0% in 2022.

East Africa recorded the highest inflation at 26.5% in 2023, with Sudan leading the way at 245.3%.  West Africa has the second highest at 20.3%, with Sierra Leone and Ghana topping the list.

The report said the higher inflation across Africa has eroded socioeconomic gains made before the COVID-19 outbreak.

The increase reflects a combination of higher local food prices induced by drought-related domestic supply shortages, liquidity overhangs from pandemic-related fiscal and monetary policy stimulus undertaken in 2020–21, and the pass-through effects of currency depreciation against a strong US dollar propelled by high interest rates in the United States. Across regions, the inflation picture is mixed.

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This is higher than the 2.8% it earlier predicted in February 2024.

According to the AfDB, the revised growth rate is stronger than earlier anticipated, describing the medium-term growth outlook as positive.

The expected growth rate would be led by industry and services on the supply side and private consumption and investment on the demand side.

Ghana will thus place 14th ahead of Nigeria in West Africa with the strongest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

Nonetheless, the outlook is clouded by several factors, including the impact of fiscal consolidation under the Post-Covid Programme for Economic Growth, the lingering effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, limited access to finance and foreign exchange, and global macroeconomic shocks.

However, AfDB said prudent macroeconomic management policies could mitigate the risks.

To fast-track structural transformation, the African Development Bank urged Ghana to enhance its competitiveness by easing infrastructure bottlenecks; and accelerate agro-industrialization by strengthening skills development, among others.

“Ghana’s structural transformation needs reinforcement. Productivity has stagnated in services, the dominant employment sector, and is rising only slowly in industry and agriculture. Agriculture’s employment share declined from 53.9% in 2007 to 29.8% in 2019, while the industry’s share rose from 14.1% to 21.0% and services’ share rose from 31.9% to 49.2% over the same period.

“To fast-track structural transformation, Ghana must enhance its competitiveness by easing infrastructure bottlenecks;  accelerate  agro-industrialization  by strengthening  skills  development, value addition, and private sector development; and create a policy framework for technology adoption and innovation”.

West African growth rate to hit 4.2%

Meanwhile, growth is projected to pick up in West Africa, rising from an estimated 3.6% in 2023 to 4.2% in 2024 and consolidating at 4.4% the following year. This is an upgrade of 0.3 percentage points for 2024 over the January MEO  2024 projections, reflecting stronger growth upgrades in the region’s large economies— Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal.

Real GDP growth is projected to rise to 3.7% in 2024 and will exceed the rate posted in 2022 by 2025, reaching 4.3% as most of the effects of the aforementioned factors fade.

The projected rebound in Africa’s average growth will be led by East Africa (up by 3.4 percentage points) and Southern Africa and West Africa (each rising by 0.6 percentage points).

Importantly, 40 countries will post higher growth in 2024 relative to 2023, and the number of countries with more than 5 percent growth rate will increase to 17.

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25 African countries are already carrying excess debt or have a high risk of doing so.

According to the Bank Group, the structure of African debt has changed considerably. Bilateral debt now represents 27% versus 52% in 2000, whereas commercial debt accounts for 43% of total debt up from 20% in 2000.

“A multilateral approach demands that we understand the nature of the debt itself, what is changing, and how we can respond to it,” said President of the African Development Bank Group, Akinwumi Adesina, at the Doha Forum in December 2023, at the theme of: “Decoding the Debt Dilemma—Unveiling Multilateral Solutions”.

“The expansion and fragmentation of the creditor base has complicated debt settlement by the Bretton Woods institutions,” explained President Adesina with concern.

Of the four African countries – Chad, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Ghana – that have applied for debt treatment under the G20 Common Framework, only Zambia has completed the process enabling it to benefit from the facility in 2023.

“Reforming the global architecture of the financial system and debt to reduce costs, time frames and the legal complications of restructuring African countries’ debts is a matter of urgency,” insisted Mr Adesina at the Bank’s 2023 Annual Meetings in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

He urged African countries to avoid high costs limit the possibility of a new debt crisis, and push for increased transparency and global coordination between creditors.

Risk

The other debt-related problem lies in the “Africa premium” that countries on the continent must pay when they access capital markets, despite data showing that default rates in Africa are lower than in other parts of the world.

A Moody’s analysis of the default rates for global infrastructure shows, for example, that Africa ranks higher, at 5.5%, than Asia, at 8.5%, and Latin America, at 13%.

Yet the perception of risk in Africa, reflected by the global ratings institutions, results in an often unjustified increase in borrowing costs for African countries.

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The IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, met Thursday, October 5, 2023, with the President of the African Development Bank Group, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. It is the first time an IMF head has visited the Bank headquarters since its establishment in 1964.

Welcoming Madama Georgieva, Dr. Adesina said, “The natural resource-backed loans are non-transparent, expensive and make debt resolution difficult.” He warned that if the trend continues, “it will be a disaster for Africa.”

Madam Georgieva said the Fund’s senior management team will “carry out a thorough assessment. We will come with a strong voice to tell countries not to create avenues for predatory and enslaving loans.”

She said the issue would also be discussed at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable comprised of bilateral creditors, private creditors and borrowing countries. The roundtable is co-chaired by the IMF, World Bank and the presidency of the G20. The African Union joined the G20 in September as a permanent member. 

The IMF chief said she is visiting Africa at a time when the continent holds much promise for more dynamic growth in the world.

“We often focus on the challenges that the continent is facing because it is here the impact of climate change is much more severe, where macro-economic and financial instability and debt are amplified.”

“But we want to focus on opportunities in Africa for the simple fact that the capital is in the North and a young population is in the South, primarily here in Africa. Unless we build a bridge for capital to flow to where it is needed most, it could lead to a bigger problem.”

Dr. Adesina praised bold efforts by the IMF chief and the US Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, to shore up the global economy by allocating $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

Africa, with a population of more than 1.2 billion, received about $33 billion of SDRs, representing only 5 percent of the total allocation, the smallest portion among the different regions of the world.

The African Development Bank continues to lead conversations and develop models that will allow SDRs to be rechanneled through multilateral development banks. MDBs can leverage such resources three to four times their original values. Adesina thanked the IMF for working with the African Development Bank’s team on an initiative that could allow SDRs to be channeled through MDBs.

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The Post COVID-19 Skills Development and Productivity Enhancement Project (PSDPEP) seeks to build health-related skills in higher education, restore livelihoods, strengthen public communication and create jobs among the youth and women. 

 About $4 million would be given to Small and Medium Enterprises as loans at a reduced rate to enable them to withstand the impacts of the pandemic. 

 The PSDPEP beneficiaries include Social Investment Fund, Microfinance and Small Loans Centre, the Biotechnology Centre, the School of Nursing and Midwifery, and the Microbiology Centre. 

The rest are the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Vocational Training Institute. 

Mr Osei Bonsu Amoah, the Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development inaugurating the steering and technical committees to supervise the implementation, commended the AFDB for the support, “especially at the time where donor funding was weaning”. 

He said PSDPEP’s goals were in line with the Government’s National Decentralisation, Policy and Strategy Programme that focused on local economic development, physical decentralisation and rural development.

“Health is a major component and we are happy this is coming on board to help. In meeting the targets of this project majority of our strategies on growth and development will be actualised,” he said. 

 Mr Amoah advised the committees to work assiduously to ensure the expected outcomes were met timely and successfully. 

 The Deputy Minister also urged the committees to consider issues of cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness.  

 The Committees have been tasked to, among others, ensure that all project beneficiary institutions perform their roles satisfactorily and also ensure that the project implementation failures are corrected expeditiously. 

The membership comprises officials of the Ministries of Local Government and Rural Development and Decentralisation, Education, Health, Finance, Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation. 

 The rest are the Gender, Children, and Social Protection, the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations; the University of Ghana, MASLOC; the Ministry of Information, the Ghana Statistical Service, and the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA). 

The Project Technical Committee will regularly review project implementation and report to the Project Steering Committee and its membership of all project beneficiaries.  

 Mr Kofi Frimpong, the Executive Director, Social Investment Fund, said the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many sectors of the economy, especially the health and small and medium enterprises, hence the focus of the project on skills development in those areas.  

He stated that the credit and entrepreneurship arm of the project was expected to benefit at least 24,800 directly and 50,000 indirectly through the Bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship and Investment Fund (YEIB). 

Mr Emmanuel Fordjour, Desk Head of AfDB at the Ministry of Finance, said the project was well thought-out and that the GNA, would see some of its offices renovated and re-tooled to deliver on its mandate. 

The University of Ghana would be empowered to be able to develop vaccines. 

 Mrs Yvonne Quansah, the Director, External Resource Mobilisation and Economic Relations at the Ministry of Finance, who Chairs the PSDPEP Steering Committee, gave an assurance that it would discharge its duties to ensure the effective implementation of the Project. 

The plan, which has received the approval of the board of directors of the bank, is expected to provide 20 million farmers with improved seeds and fertilisers, as well as other farm inputs.

The plan is to help farmers produce 38 million tonnes of food, worth $12 billion, annually.

The President of the AfDB, Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, disclosed this at a press conference in Accra yesterday.

The media interaction was to open the 2022 Annual Meetings of the AfDB, being held in Accra from yesterday, May 23 to Friday, May 27, this year.

Details

Dr Adesina said the food to be produced included 11 million tonnes of wheat, 18 million tonnes of maize, six million tonnes of rice and 2.5 million tonnes of soybeans.

He said the Russian/Ukraine conflict had led to new challenges for Africa, especially in terms of high energy prices, high fertiliser prices and the disruption of food imports.

“With about 30 million tonnes of food imports, especially wheat and maize, that will not be coming from Russia and Ukraine, Africa faces a looming food crisis,” the AfDB President stated.

Tackling the challenge

He said it was for that reason that the AfDB had stepped up to the new challenge to ensure that Africa did not experience the looming food crisis.

“Africa does not need bowls in hand; Africa needs seeds in the ground. Africa should not be begging for food; Africa must produce its own food. There is no dignity in begging for food,” he said.

“That is why the AfDB Group, with support from the African Union Commission, developed and launched the $1.5 billion Africa Emergency Food Production Plan,” he stated.

Dr Adesina said the group was confident that the plan would help avoid a looming food crisis because it was based on the incredibly successful work of the AfDB through its High Five on Feed Africa.

“Our Feed Africa High 5 work has already benefitted over 76 million farmers with access to improved agricultural technologies.

“The bank has also been implementing a very successful programme: Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), which is getting agricultural technologies to farmers at scale,” he noted.

Climate smart seeds

Sharing some of the achievements of the TAAT, the AfDB President said it had been able to deliver climate smart seeds to 12 million farmers in 27 countries in just two years.

He added that TAAT also delivered water efficient maize to 5.6 million households in East Africa, an area hit by severe drought three years ago.

“The drought was severe, but farmers secured their food supply with the water efficient maize varieties,” he said.

“In The Sudan, TAAT financed the provision of 65,000 tonnes of heat tolerant wheat varieties. That is, seeds enough to fill 665 Airbus 380 aircraft, the largest passenger airplanes.

“Sudanese farmers grew on 317,000 hectares, and in just two years, Sudan reduced its wheat import by 50 per cent,” he pointed out.

Climate change

Commenting on the theme for this year’s annual meetings: ‘Achieving Climate Resilience and a Just Energy Transition’, Dr Adesina said climate change was an ever-present existential threat to Africa.

“From droughts, floods and cyclones, extreme weather events are devastating African economies; nine out of the 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change are in Africa. Indeed, Africa is the second most vulnerable region to climate change in the world,” he stated.

He said climate change was killing African economies, pointing out that annually, the continent lost between $7 billion and $15 billion due to climate change, with the figure expected to rise to $50 billion a year by 2040.

Financing needs

AfDB President said while the continent accounted for just four per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, it was short-changed by climate financing.

He noted that Africa’s financing needs to address climate change ranged between $1.3 trillion and $1.6 trillion for 2020 to 2030.

“However, Africa is not getting enough resources to tackle climate change. Africa gets only three per cent of total global climate finance.

“Climate financing mobilised globally falls short of Africa’s needs by $100 billion to $127 billion per year between 2020 and 2030,” he said.

Energy transitions

As per the Paris Agreement, he said, African countries were committed to reducing their carbon emissions, through energy transitions.

He said the continent had abundant renewable energy resources, including solar, hydro, wind and geothermal resources.

“The AfDB is spearheading investments in renewable energy and over 86 per cent of the energy generation investments by the bank is in renewable energy,” he pointed out.

“However, Africa cannot rely only on renewables, due to their intermittency. Africa needs to combine renewables with natural gas to assure stability and security of energy and to improve access and affordability, as well as energy security,” the AfDB President said.

Natural gas must, therefore, be part of Africa’s Just Energy transition systems, he added.

“It should be noted that even of Africa triples the use of gas for gas-to-power, it will contribute less than 0.67 per cent to global carbon emissions.

So Just Energy Transition must not short-change Africa’s growth and development, especially stable energy to power its industrialisation,” Dr Adesina stated.

According to him, the perception that agriculture is not financially rewarding and not “cool” has made African youth turn their back to the sector.

Delivering a speech on the topic: “Agriculture is Cool: Engaging Africa’s Youth” at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group in India on Monday, May 22, Mr Mahama said there was the need to make agriculture attractive for the African youth to increase their involvement in the sector.

Mr Mahama encouraged young people in Africa to take up agriculture because the occupation can be “cool” and, with support from governments, profitable.

Using his life experience as an example, he said: “using the PF model, we hold up successful farmers to their peers and it encouraged them to follow”.

“When we worked on my dad’s farm, on Mondays to Fridays, we were on the farm ploughing, planting, and doing everything. And on Friday evening, we jump in our car and drive to town. We take off our farm clothes, we dress, we wear shoes and trousers and we hit the disco on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday we are back to the farm village and Monday we are back on the farm again and the young people in town loved it, and, so, they became interested in agriculture,” the ex-president said.

“Unfortunately, that phase in agriculture in Africa passed because of the Economic Recovery Programme and all that and governments were forced to abandon all subsidies to farmers, and, so, farmers were left on their own. Medium-scale farms collapsed and it was back to peasant farming,” the former Ghanaian leader recounted.

Below is the full address

Thank you Lerato for the introduction. Let me also thank the President of the African Development Bank, my good friend Dr. Adesina and his team for the invitation to me and other distinguished African citizens, some of who are on this afternoon’s panel.

I am happy to be part of the quest to find solutions to the agricultural challenge that faces Africa, but which can be transformed into a multi-million-dollar opportunity for the continent and for our youth especially.

As an African leader who just left office, one of the most frustrating growth statistics for me has been that of the agricultural sector. Other sectors have been clipping along at quite a fast pace, and in Ghana the service sector overtook agriculture as the largest contributor to GDP in 2010.

Services now account for some 54.1% of GDP and agriculture stands at 19.0%. While this is normal for a modernizing economy, agriculture and agribusiness still represents the sector that can soak up the pressure we are all feeling from the rapidly expanding African youth bulge.

I felt cool when I noticed I had been requested to make a statement on the theme “Agriculture is cool: Engaging Africa’s Youth.” The bane of African agriculture is the disinterest of our educated young people in the sector.

The perception of most is that agriculture is back breaking, dirty work and is meant for the aged and illiterate rural population.

This is a great pity, because agriculture is a science, it is no longer a way of life, it is a business.

Africa needs its educated youth who can understand the principles of increased agricultural productivity to participate in the sector. If you put in the right factors of agricultural production labour, good seeds, good soil, water, sunshine, plant nutrients, right weed and pest control you will achieve the same result on each occasion – ABUNDANCE.

To achieve that we have to make agriculture cool! And it’s not the cool our generation is familiar with. For the youth or the millennial, cool is not the absence of heat.

It can mean good, pleasant, elegant, fashionable, delicious, and many other things depending on the context in which they use it.

Learning to communicate with this millennial group is a whole subject in itself. For our generation cool is the antonym for heat. Something is cool when it is not hot. If my father should resurrect, he will be totally flabbergasted in his communication with his grandchildren.

For my son when he says ‘Dad your Jacket is cool’ it means my jacket is fashionable or nice. But he can hit you with this one too “Dad you look hot”. It doesn’t mean I am sweating.

Cool- Hot. He might be eating hot food and say “this food is cool”, he means the food is delicious. You don’t need to offer to heat it in the microwave for him. Or my younger son falls of his bike and I ask with concern, “Jesse are you hurt”, “No Dad, I’m cool”. It means he is not
hurt.

Or “I’m going out for a walk, I’ll be back soon” the answer “cool” here simply means “OK”. And for my daughter Farida “Have you done your homework”? I’m cool simply means “Yes”. In the context in which we are speaking, I believe COOL means attractive. How do we make farming attractive for the young people of Africa? That is what we are talking about today.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Whatever this cool means that is what we need in African agriculture. It is COOL we are having this conversation at this time, at the same time it is sad we are having it at a critical time when the world is grappling with climate change, in addition to other pressing issues that require urgent global attention.

Africa has the youngest population in the world. This represents huge opportunities for the continent and the world if we act promptly in engaging these young people. If we do not in good time fashion out effective, sustainable programmes to engage and put these vibrant, creative young people to work, we could be having a major social problem on our hands, a potentially explosive situation with dire consequences reaching beyond Africa.

But working together, ladies and gentlemen, we can address this menacing continental threat. We have an opportunity to channel the unused and boundless energies of our youth into productive agricultural ventures for the benefit of individual households, the continent of Africa and the world at large.

Let us agree though that for many young people, Agriculture is not their preferred career or business option. This is widely due to the perception that Agriculture is not financially rewarding enough; it is not youth friendly enough; and as I said earlier it is not ‘cool’ enough.

These perceptions and views can change, and are changing through various interventions we are undertaking on the continent. For many years, the agricultural landscape in Africa was characterised by small-sized peasant farmers engaged in subsistence farming basically geared towards feeding their families and providing just enough to exchange for such items as salt, cloth and fish, and whatever they cannot grow on their farms.

Mistakes have been made in the past and it is good to know lessons have been learnt from these mistakes. In Ghana, the dislocation of large to medium scale agriculture occurred in the 1980s. The blame can be laid squarely at the door steps of the international financial institutions.

The Economic Recovery Programme that we implemented specified that subsidies on all social services including agriculture must be removed. Subsidies that we granted to farmers for fertiliser and other agriculture inputs were withdrawn. The poor African farmer was abandoned to compete with the highly subsidised Western farmer and this is such a pity because if we intended at the time to reduce poverty then that was the segment of the population we should have been assisting through subsidies.

For a continent that is ambitiously working towards feeding itself and eradicating malnutrition by 2025 that is a very big challenge. Agriculture is growing in Africa.

In Ghana Agriculture’s contribution to GDP averaged 6.54 billion GHS from 2006 and hit 7.8 billion GHS in 2016. The problem is that this pace of growth is not fast enough. Africa is a continent in a hurry, when it comes to agriculture.

The good news is that, with the right factors in place’ agriculture is a lucrative business for anybody ready to invest. With more than enough arable lands, improved seedlings and livestock breeds, and assured support of institutions like the AfDB and our individual governments, it is among the next phase of business on the continent that can attract and absorb many young people.

I have met a number of promising young farmers, both in and out of Ghana, and from my interactions with them, they are not only thriving but growing their businesses.

My father was a farmer and was among the first to begin large scale private sector commercial agriculture in Ghana. But I must say he and others like him would not have succeeded without the massive support given to them by the Government at the time.

Visiting the farm with my father, I learnt to plough the rice fields and to use various kinds of mechanized agricultural equipment. Only last Saturday, and the Thursday before that, I visited my farm and I am consciously building that interest in my children as well.

We must leave Ahmedabad with a determination to deepen our collaboration to present Agriculture as a lucrative venture for our teeming youth population. I remain excited and quite certain that properly packaged, the concept of AGRIPRENEURSHIP, the new ‘COOL’ will be well
received and embraced by our youth.

Can you imagine the extent of impact that millions of young Africans in Agriculture will make in the world’s fight for food security?

Ladies and gentlemen, We have the future in our hands. We can mould the kind of tomorrow we want today by serving as mentors, advisors and promoters of youth in agricultural development.

I wish to commend President Akin Adesina and the board of AfDB for making increased agricultural productivity in Africa one of the priorities on the Bank’s agenda. We must enhance the collaboration between the Bank and African Governments and enhance assistance to young farmers to make agriculture an integral part of national policy and planning.

In Ghana, we have employed various strategies in addressing first the lack of interest in agriculture while gradually eradicating barriers to success by young people in this sector.

First, we started the Youth in Agriculture Programme, a platform for young people graduating from our colleges to work on our state farms and learn modern techniques such as the use of green houses, the production of local or exotic crops and other modern techniques.

This we believed will and has actually enabled these young graduates learn a few more skills, generate interest that will get them in the long run to choose agriculture as a means of providing an income and becoming successful individuals.

The new government is continuing with the Programme in a rebranded form, and that should see a lot more youth supported and the concept of cooperatives enhanced to increase participation and sustain the interest of the youth.

In the twilight of my administration in November 2016, I introduced the concept of Farmer Services Centres and this was based on an experience I had. Farmers do not need the tractors and the planters. What they need are the service of these equipment. In the past what we had done, thinking we were modernising and mechanising agriculture- and it was a mistake and people should learn from our mistake- was to procure the tractors, subsidise them and give them to the farmers.

We found out that the farmers cannot maintain the tractors and do not have the knowhow to manage the tractors and keep them running. In two, three years, brand new tractors provided break down and are standing on stones.

So, we need to introduce specialisation and that informs the concept of Farmer Services Centres where the agricultural equipment will be available and all the farmer has to do is register and get the service from the Centre. The business of maintaining the equipment is completely that of the Farmer Services Centre. I hope the new government will continue with that programme so that farmers can receive service when they need it.

In Ghana, as in other Africa countries, our land tenure system is a major drawback for young people wishing to venture into agriculture. Acquiring land for agricultural investment can be a hellish experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, One of our most successful interventions was the extension of support from the Export Development and Agriculture Investment Fund (EDAIF) to resource farmers involved in various stages of developing large farms and I will cite a few examples.

Gameli Farms, located in the Northern Region of Ghana, is owned and controlled by a young Ghanaian who at the time he started was about 34 years old. He had a total of 500 acres but due to inadequate resources, started cultivating only 15 acres of his land.

With support of approximately $15,000 in 2012 he was able to dig a borehole, install a small localised irrigation system and expand his mango farm from 15 acres to approximately 60 acres.

He intercrops his mango farm with maize and has expanded his production of maize to cover another 40 acres bringing total production to about 100 acres.

Gameli Hoedoafia, this young farmer, has a Master’s degree in Social Policy and only started farming after a short stint in the UK where he worked within the local government sector. His plan is to expand production to cover the 500 acres under his control.

Kwame Boamah of Nhyira Fruits Enterprise located at Nsawam in the Eastern Region is also a young man, less than 30 years old. Before he got assistance from EDAIF, his total land under cultivation was approximately 20 acres. After a funding support of about $50,000, he increased his acreage to about 84 acres.

The financial assistance he received also allowed him to purchase a juice processing equipment with which he now processes his pineapple produce from the farm into fruit juice for sale. The other advantage he got was that he was introduced to a new variety of pineapple that is of very high demand in Europe and he is considering increasing his acreage in order to access that market.

The third example is the Flowing Streams Enterprise located at Pantang in the Greater Accra Region. The owner of this farm was struggling to survive due to lack of financial resources and also external shocks caused by the damping of imported chicken on the local market.

He received assistance in the form of technical and financial support valued at about $37,500 for him to be able to expand his farm from the previous 2,000-bird capacity to a 10,000-bird capacity farm. The expectation is that gradually he will be assisted to increase to over 100,000 birds in the medium to long term.

These examples show how government can partner young people who have decided to engage in farming. We believe that by helping these farmers to succeed we will sustain their interest and increase the number of young people who will be attracted to come into agriculture.

EDAIF, now converted into Ghana Exim was previously focused on export development only, but because of the interest in promoting agriculture, I promoted a review of the law to include agricultural investment and the results are encouraging.

Ladies and gentlemen, One of the things we have not fully and deliberately considered is the development of technologies to meet the needs of agricultural farmers and workers who are physically challenged.

I also believe that African states have a duty to play not only as regulators but as key stakeholders involved at every stage of the Agricultural production process.
This means that scientific research needs to be conducted on the entire Agricultural value chain– from securing the most fertile land, determining the best produce for the land, through to value addition of the harvested products and securing fair trade among international trading partners.
Thank you.