Stalled progress: The $75m question
Ghana’s agricultural sector, the backbone of our economy and the primary source of livelihood for a significant portion of our population, finds itself at a critical crossroads.
Yet, according to a stark revelation from the World Bank, we are not being held back by a lack of funds or technical know-how, but by our own administrative inertia.
Last Tuesday, at a civil society dialogue in Accra, a Senior Agricultural Economist at the World Bank, Dr Ashwini Rekha Sebastian, dropped a troubling truth: critical agricultural investments worth $75 million have been stalled for nearly two years. Funding is in place.
Technical designs are ready.
What is missing is timely Cabinet and parliamentary approval, coupled with slow policy processes and ongoing fiscal constraints.
That a fully financed, meticulously planned set of projects can be held up for two years by domestic bureaucratic delays is not merely unfortunate; it is a systemic failure that demands accountability.
How can such delays happen in the first place?
This is the question that must echo through the corridors of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, and Parliament itself.
Consider the stakes. Ghana currently spends nearly $2 billion annually on food imports, about $700 million on rice alone, and vast sums on poultry and tomatoes.
Every day that a ready-made agricultural project remains unapproved is a day we continue to export jobs and foreign exchange to countries whose farmers we could be supporting at home.
The paradox is glaring: we have the money and the plans, yet we lack the institutional speed to move beyond approval to action.
The explanation offered points to “broader institutional processes” and the need for coordination across multiple government agencies. But this is not a sufficient excuse.
When the World Bank, a multilateral institution known for its rigorous procedural requirements, has already completed its part, the onus falls squarely on our domestic governance structures to match that efficiency.
A system that cannot approve and execute ready-made, fully funded projects within two years is a system in desperate need of reform.
The consequences are tangible. One intervention, a targeted matching grant programme for larger aggregators and millers who form part of the agricultural value chain, has been stuck in administrative pipelines for over a year and a half.
Farmers are waiting. Millers are waiting.
The potential for job creation and economic stimulus remains unrealised.
We cannot continue to operate with a gap between policy and impact.
Participants in the dialogue rightly questioned why, despite multiple investments and initiatives, the impact of ongoing agricultural programmes is not widely visible.
Part of the answer, Dr Sebastian noted, is a lack of communication.
But the larger truth is that impact is only visible when projects are implemented.
A project that remains on a desk in a ministry has no effect on a farm in the Volta Region or a market in Accra.
This is precisely why the conversation cannot remain confined to meeting rooms in Accra.
The citizenry, the farmers, the traders, and the consumers who feel the pinch of high tomato prices and the uncertainty of imported rice must take an active interest in these deliberations.
Moreover, public interest and sustained media scrutiny serve as powerful correctives to administrative delay.
When citizens regularly ask their Members of Parliament why a particular irrigation project or matching grant remains unapproved, when civil society tracks the timeline of every stalled investment and makes that information accessible, the cost of inaction becomes politically visible.
Development partners such as the World Bank have done their part by providing funding and technical support.
Now it falls to the Ghanaian people to hold their institutions accountable for moving those resources from approval letters to the farmlands.
An engaged populace is not a nuisance to governance; it is the very engine that ensures governance delivers.
While we acknowledge the government’s commitment to the sector and the fiscal constraints it faces, these cannot be allowed to become permanent excuses.
Fiscal challenges should necessitate smarter, faster, and more efficient prioritisation, not paralysis.
The Daily Graphic calls on the Executive to prioritise the submission of these critical agricultural agreements to Parliament with the urgency they deserve.
