Burkina Faso’s Bagre Dam spillage, Ghana’s food security
The announcement was sudden! Burkina Faso’s Bagre Dam spillage, which was earlier announced to start on Wednesday, August 27, 2025, has been brought forward 48 hours to Monday, August 25, 2025 because of heavy inflows of water.
Farmers in the Upper East, North-East and Oti regions were therefore advised by NADMO to “move to higher ground!” While NADMO says it has relocated over 98,000 persons, farmers complained that they had lost their homes, farms and livelihoods.
Collateral damage includes snakebites, insect bites, malaria and typhoid fever. Indeed, they added that the government promises made to compensate them for similar floods since 2019 have not been fulfilled!
Why has a permanent solution not been found to the effects of the perennial flooding, which affects part of Ghana’s “food/bread-basket,” with the negative effect on food security?
In 2019, work officially started on a multi-purpose Pwalugu Dam to solve the flooding problem! What happened?
Food security took me to my two articles in May 2018 titled, “Coconuts, watermelons and tomatoes,” and more recently, June 2024 titled, “Glut-and-scarcity of food/fruits”, quoted below.
Saturday, May 25, 2024, was the 61st anniversary of the formation of the African Union (AU).
The African Union, technically (now 22 years old), came into being in July 2002 when it replaced the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) founded on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Some of the OAU’s founding fathers were Ghana’s Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
Contrary to what some Ghanaians expected, May 25, 2024, passed quietly with no AU commemoration. On TV that night, the news focused on the plight of tomato farmers at Ellembele, Western Region, where their tomatoes rotted away with no market.
Coincidentally, a friend I chatted with lamented the sorry state of the Nsawam Canneries when he saw it during the week. This was one of many of Osagyefo’s import-substituting factories, as was his envisioned Pwalugu Tomato Factory in the 1960s.
There was also news on Ghana’s approval of 18 Genetically Modified (GMO) seeds.
Mentioning “tomatoes” took me back to my May 2018 article in the Daily Graphic titled “Coconuts, watermelons and tomatoes (cwt)” part read as follows:
The almost forgotten abbreviation “cwt” that we were taught in Science at school in the 1960s stood for “hundredweight.”
This is a unit of measure which has one hundredweight, equivalent to one hundred (100) US pounds, or 112 Imperial/British pounds.
My experience is that while fruits and vegetables are weighed and sold by the pound or kilogram in many African countries I have visited, Ghana does not sell fruits and vegetables by weight.
Therefore, during the season of plenty, coconuts, watermelons and tomatoes (cwt) as well as all perishable agricultural commodities sell cheaply.
During the lean season a few months later, prices rocket to Space. There is no canning to serve as a buffer for balance.
Watermelons
Recently, I moved out of my comfort zone to explore some parts of Accra I had not visited in a long while. The commonest “landmark” I saw - either on the ground in their hundreds, or being transported to be dumped on the ground at their final destinations for sale - was watermelons.
There is a glut of the fruit everywhere. Farmers are forced to sell them cheaply because of their perishable nature.
Indeed, my observation applies to tomatoes, oranges, onions, plantains, yams, fish etc. They are cheap and rot away with high post-harvest losses.
We still use “olonka” and “margarine tin” as a unit of measure for rice, maize and other cereals. Fruits are counted and priced!
A rough approximation of the average-sized watermelon is about the size of a football. Five such jumbo-sized watermelons were recently bought for ten cedis at Ada Junction.
The alternative for the farmer is to leave the melons to rot and go hungry, which is not a realistic option. As soon as the peak season is over, prices will start rising.
In the lean season, one watermelon sells for over GH¢20! This is an annual ritual.
Questions
Why do we continue to operate so close to nature with all the knowledge, science and technology around us?
Why are our leaders/rulers, or “misleaders,” as African leaders are described by the Kenyan Professor PLO Lumumba, only interested in their families/friends?
Ghana had the Nsawam Canneries as far back as the 1960s. More than 60 years after independence, why do farmers watch helplessly as their fruits and vegetables rot, while our shops are filled with expensive fruit juices imported from other countries?
Why can we not have a cannery in the general area of Ada-Dawhenya for watermelons/tomatoes, and one for citrus in the Asamankese-Kade area?
How about mangoes which grow all over the country? Sadly, while our mangoes rot here, we import millions of dollars of mangoes from Burkina-Faso
Expatriate
An expatriate who worked in Ghana as a government official retired and left for his country. Almost immediately, he returned as a private citizen and established a pineapple farm on the banks of the Volta River.
Using local labour, he had his pineapples sliced and canned on the farm. Customs did their certification and the canned pineapples were shipped to his country!
Is this Rocket Science our leaders need to be schooled in?
Unfortunately, people I have talked to contend that Ghanaian businessmen/women have not recovered from the psychological damage done to business during the revolutionary days of the 1970s/1980s, when all successful businessmen were declared thieves and hounded.
Examples are given of the destruction of the local soap industry of Dr Ephson and Mr Appiah-Menkah, poultry industry of Mr Darko, International Tobacco of Mr BA Mensah, and Tata Brewery of Mr Siaw.
Solution
In advocating solutions, I may be guilty of reinventing the wheel. This is because there is nothing new to tell Ghanaians which we have not known since I was a little boy in the 1960s.
The problem has been bad leadership. We had the Bolgatanga Corned-Beef Factory, Pwalugu Tomato Factory and Nsawam Canneries for fruits/vegetables before the 1966 coup overthrew Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah.
“Nantwi” Milk was produced at the Agricultural Farm at Amrahia. Today, milk produced in the Volta Region is left to rot for lack of market, the result of bad roads.
Meanwhile, Ghana imports milk/dairy-products. We import tomatoes while local tomatoes in Ningo-Prampram rot away. We import laboratory-made mango juice while our mangoes rot.
Imported canned coconut juice is sold in Ghanaian supermarkets. Why do we still drive whole coconuts from the Western Region to Accra only for the husks to add to our insanitary conditions?
Why do we do this to ourselves?
As a cadet, I was taught that leaders solve problems, not talk copiously explaining why they have failed to solve problems. Leadership is effective if it is selfless, honest and done with integrity.
More than 60 years after independence, we have no reason to continue importing food, fruits/fruit juices which Ghana produced locally in the 1960s!
Need I repeat my submissions in my May 2018/June 2024 articles as tomatoes rot on our farms while oligarchs make profits importing tinned tomatoes?
Bob Marley said, “The greatness of a man/leader is not how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively!” Governance is not Rocket Science! As British Field Marshal Slim said, “Leadership is plain common sense!”
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Discussion
Just as Ghana spilled water from our Akosombo Dam in 2023 when high water levels threatened the dam’s integrity, resulting in the flooding of Tongu, Burkina Faso will spill the Bagre Dam anytime its integrity is threatened.
Are we waiting for the next Bagre Dam spillage to remind ourselves of Ghana’s food security again, while “galamsey” ravages on?
Let us not behave like the proverbial vulture, which promises to build itself a nest every year during the rainy season, but goes to sleep as soon as the rains are over.
Pwalugu Dam offered Ghana hope. What happened?
Leadership, lead by example/integrity! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!
The writer is a former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association
Nairobi, Kenya; Council Chairman, Family Health University,
Teshie, Accra
E-mail: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
