Huge opportunities for Ghana`s agribusiness sector…but savvy executive leadership needed

The agribusiness sector in Ghana is still rudimentary, with little growth or development over the last decades, however new markets and business opportunities exist for the sector to rake in millions of US dollars in revenue, while creating thousands of jobs.

However, the sector needs a savvy executive leadership, and new and innovative lending programmes to fully benefit from this existing market. Professor Ralph Christy, Ag. Economist, Market Matters Inc.Cornell University, estimates that by the year 2015, the majority of Africans would be living in urban areas.

This transformation, he said, would pose a real challenge to agribusinesses, to supply the demand of the teaming consumers who will be looking out for whole different bundles of qualities such as value, convenience, and a lot more that would change and transform agribusinesses on the continent.

To position and better face the challenges ahead, African agribusinesses would have to take full advantage of new forms of capital that are coming into their businesses, and embrace new trends such as information technology and biotechnology.

More importantly, the agribusiness sector in Ghana, and to a larger extent Africa, could improve faster with their ability to engage in strategy.

“What our businesses must learn to do is to engage in better strategies to improve their competitiveness to make profit,” Professor Ralph Christy noted.

He said Africans had failed to add value to their generated products such as cocoa, coffee and cotton, but until they add value to their produce by shaping them into new products and services, the sector would continue to dwindle to the detriment of economic growth and employment generation.

Professor Ralph Christy shared these thoughts with The Chronicle, at the sidelines of an Agribusiness Forum, organised by the Trade and Investment Programme Export Economy (TIPCEE), on new opportunities for Agro-enterprises in Ghana, in Accra yesterday.

The programme was aimed at developing business leaders' skills, with successful practices such as market strategic planning, B2B negations skills and fiscal management used by global corporations that improve profit.

The forum was also to help develop an integrated agro-lending programme, whereby the banks and firms could partner in management of their agribusiness operations, and also develop a model programme applicable to Ghana's agricultural industry.

The government of Ghana has over the years instituted programmes at developing the agribusiness sector in the country.

This is expressed in the President's declaration to make Ghana an agro-industrial nation in the next ten years.

Programmes, such as the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy, has medium term priorities that include the modernisation of agriculture through improved access to land, intensification of research and extension services, provision of irrigation facilities, credit to farmers, and support to private sector to add value to agricultural produce.

While the medium to long term strategies include access to farming inputs and irrigation-based farming techniques, development of marketing channels for agricultural produce, encouraging the development of non-traditional exports, and accelerated growth of small and medium scale manufacturing industries, through diffusion of appropriate technologies and vibrant training programmes.