Feeding Ghana: Here are 5 practical steps to help stabilise food prices
The John Mahama administration's vision to reset Ghana includes a strategic plan to ‘Feed the Nation’. This plan is vital because a hungry nation is often an angry nation, and addressing food insecurity is fundamental to the nation’s peace and stability.
Food goes beyond being a mere human necessity; it is an important cornerstone of national security. When food becomes unavailable, it tears at society's fabric, making health, stability, and peace harder to sustain. Ghana's food production has improved over the years due to heavy investment in productivity-enhancing policies.
Despite Ghana's advancement in food production, food insecurity issues linger. For example, the Global Hunger Index categorises Ghana as a moderately hungry nation. In 2024, the World Food Programme reported that more than one million Ghanaians faced some degree of food insecurity at various times throughout the year.
Critical forces prevent the even distribution of food produced nationwide by farmers to households. Chief among these is persistent food price hikes. Food security is not just about the availability of food, but also reliable access to affordable and nutritious food. As of March 2025, Ghana's annual food inflation rate stood at 26.5%.
In simple terms, if a household previously spent GHC 1,000 monthly on food, they now need about GHC 1,265 for the same amount. For financially struggling households, this often means eating less, choosing cheaper, less nutritious food, cutting essential services like education and healthcare, and facing higher risks of child malnutrition and stress.
Food sector actors should therefore be concerned about how to curb food prices and ensure that no Ghanaian, especially children, go to bed hungry or worry about future meals. The first step in addressing this issue is to ask: why do food prices in Ghana defy basic economic logic—rising even when production increases?
Why doesn’t more food lower prices?
Successive Ghanaian governments have implemented policies to boost agricultural production, expecting that increased supply, assuming stable demand, would lead to price stabilization or reduction, making food affordable and improving food security. This production-focused approach has yielded notable results. For instance, between 2017 and 2021, maize production increased by 43% and rice by 30%, according to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Unfortunately, food prices in Ghana have remained stubbornly high—sticky downwards—even during surpluses, while responding sharply to shocks, making them highly elastic upwards. In 2023, while maize yields increased by over 12%, retail prices rose by 18% year-on-year, per Esoko data.
The core problem is the inefficient movement of food from farm to kitchen. While the government and stakeholders have rightfully traced the issue to bottlenecks in transportation, storage, and marketing, efforts to address these gaps have been insufficient in curbing food price inflation. Examples of why food does not move efficiently and how it contributes to price hikes will suffice here.
Roadblocks in food distribution
In many farming communities, poor road infrastructure raises the cost of transporting harvested food to markets. The Wa West District exemplifies this; drivers transporting food on the Bulenga-Yaala road spend more on maintenance costs, especially during the rainy season.
These expenses are passed on to consumers, increasing food prices. This situation persists despite government efforts, including constructing two major bridges over the Kuulun and Ambalaara rivers.
The Ghana Highway Authority reports over 50% of the country's 78,000 km of feeder roads are in poor condition, limiting market access. While the government is upgrading roads in key agricultural zones like Bono, Upper East, and Volta, progress remains uneven and underfunded, leaving many communities isolated during rains.
Fuel prices have increased by over 200% in the last five years, from GHC 5 per litre in 2020 to GHS 15 per litre in March 2025, worsening food transportation costs. Presently, Ghana has no dedicated fund to buffer food transporters from fuel shocks. This lack of a dedicated fund exacerbates food price inflation, thereby directly affecting food security.
According to the Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana (CAG), Ghana loses approximately US$600 million annually due to post-harvest inefficiencies. The African Development Bank highlights that 30-35% of agricultural produce is lost due to insufficient storage. The Ghana National Tomato Traders and Transporters Association reports a 40% loss in tomatoes alone.
Investment in storage infrastructure, especially cold storage, is insufficient, leading to post-harvest losses, reduced market supply, increased food imports from Burkina Faso and Morocco, and speculative pricing.
The government is investing in the construction of about 80 new warehouses to expand grain storage across many districts in Ghana. Ghana's National Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) stores and redistributes grains for school feeding programs. These efforts are limited to grains, inadequate in scope, and lack coordination with logistics for perishable foods.
After food from farms has navigated poor road networks, high fuel costs, and storage challenges, unregulated rent-seeking behaviors by market players (itinerant traders, aggregators, wholesalers, and dominant urban market leaders—such as market queen).
Rent-seeking is the act of gaining wealth without creating value, often through market manipulation. It occurs when market actors inflate prices through arbitrary fees and manipulation, raising costs for consumers while benefiting themselves.
For example, food from farms in Ghana often passes through four to five intermediaries, each adding 10-25% in unregulated markups, further inflating food prices. In August 2023, a 100kg bag of maize cost GHC 250 wholesale in Techiman but retailed for over GHC 520 in Accra. Similarly, a study by the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) found that during peak harvests, tomatoes costing GHC 300 per crate in northern Ghana could retail for over GHC 900 in Accra, with price hikes largely driven by these intermediaries and market queen-controlled sellers.
Rethinking strategies to feed the nation
Despite government efforts to address food movement inefficiencies, price stability remains elusive due to two factors. First, there has been an overemphasis on boosting food production, with insufficient focus on efficient distribution to meet demand.
Second, efforts to improve food distribution are often isolated, ignoring the interconnected nature of the food value chain. For example, even if road networks are improved, without controlling fuel prices or addressing middlemen's role, food prices may not decrease as expected.
If President John Dramani Mahama's vision of feeding Ghana is to be realized, agricultural policy must shift from increasing food production to implementing system-wide interventions that stabilize food prices in the short-to-medium term and reduce them long-term. Five practical shifts in policy orientation and strategic interventions are proposed here.
First, agricultural policy, interventions, and investments must adopt a holistic, systems-oriented approach. Investing in feeder roads, storage warehouses, or registering farmers on online platforms are necessary but insufficient intervention without integrating these efforts into a broader strategy that ensures efficient movement of food to major urban markets.
Second, food price inflation must be tackled collectively, not just by the Ministry of Agriculture. Addressing this challenge systemically requires collaboration among all stakeholders.
The Agricultural Sector Working Group (ASWG), coordinated by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and involving domestic and international stakeholders, provides a strong platform for driving coordinated action. With strategic reforms and necessary funding, the ASWG can propose new and support existing interventions, and track them to address food price inflation holistically and sustainably.
Third, partner with the private sector to continue the policy of strategic investment in agricultural infrastructure, including expanded roads in key food routes, silos, warehouses, cold storage, and pack centers in strategic locations.
Fourth, implement regulatory reforms and interventions to curb rent-seeking behaviors and enhance market transparency. This includes deploying digital traceability systems, such as GhAAP and other innovative platforms to make food pricing more transparent. In an ever-expanding digital world, these tools can track food prices along the value chain, helping to eliminate price-fixing and other anti-competitive practices that artificially inflate food prices.
Finally, recognizing fuel's critical role in food pricing, if President Mahama is to feed the nation successfully, his government should consider a strategic Food Transport Stabilization Fund. This fund would cushion transporters against fuel price fluctuations, reduce cost volatility across the value chain, and improve food affordability for consumers.
Time for collective action
Over the years, successive governments have cultivated a favorable agricultural policy environment, including enhancement in institutional capacity, stakeholder coordination, expanding infrastructure and digital systems and building public support. This environment offers the opportunity to reshape Ghana’s food future.
Sustainably feeding the nation in the long run requires bold policy shifts to reengineer the food system. We must move beyond a fragmented, production-focused approach to a comprehensive food systems strategy, with collective and active stakeholder involvement in design, implementation, monitoring and redesign. Only then can we secure affordable, nutritious food for every Ghanaian, year-round.
The stakes are too high for half-measures. If we feed the system right, the system will feed the nation.
The writer is a researcher – Development Economics at the International Water Management Institute
Email: w.quarmine@gmail.com
