GES releases funds for perishables items for second and third-year SHS, SHTS students

Jul 22, 2026

Parliament approves $300m World Bank loan for secondary education transformation project

Jul 22, 2026

Ghana government urged to tighten food imports to protect local farmers

Jul 20, 2026

Dr Charles Nyaaba, the Chief Executive Officer of the Upper East Farmers’ Cooperative Credit Union, has urged the government to tighten the importation of food commodities, particularly rice, to create a ready market for locally produced crops and protect Ghanaian farmers.

He said the influx of imported food products, much of which entered the country through unapproved border routes, was undermining local agricultural production by flooding markets and leaving farmers unable to sell their produce.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Bolgatanga, Dr Nyaaba expressed concern over the growing frustration among farmers who had invested heavily in production but could not find buyers.

“Our number one recommendation is that government should stop the influx of illegally imported rice that comes through unapproved borders. That is the major cause of the market challenges confronting our farmers,” he said.

He noted that despite government efforts through the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) to purchase maize and rice from farmers, the quantities procured represented less than 10 per cent of the available produce.

“Government has started buying maize and rice from some farmer groups, and I commend that effort, but the quantity being purchased is highly insignificant compared to what is available,” he said.

Dr Nyaaba observed that large quantities of rice and maize remained in warehouses across farming communities because buyers were unavailable, discouraging many farmers from expanding production.

“I have travelled to farming communities in Bongo, Sandema and other districts, and you still find warehouses full of rice. Some farmers have even brought their produce outside to dry because it has remained unsold for so long,” he said.

He explained that the inability to market produce had become one of the biggest disincentives to farming, saying farmers questioned the value of increasing production when they could not recover their investments.

“Farmers are asking, ‘If I receive fertiliser, produce and still cannot sell, what is the essence?’ Agriculture is not just about production; it is about producing and earning income,” he said.

Dr Nyaaba urged government to strengthen border controls to curb the influx of imported food commodities, some of which, he claimed, entered the country illegally and in some cases had expired.

“If we stop the influx of these commodities, it will automatically create a huge market for local farmers. Once farmers are assured of a market, their enthusiasm to produce will increase,” he said.

He also suggested that government should regulate food imports based on the country’s production deficit rather than allowing unrestricted importation.

According to him, if local rice production fell short of national consumption requirements, government should only issue import licences to bridge the deficit while protecting local producers from unfair competition.

Drawing comparisons with neighbouring Burkina Faso, Dr Nyaaba said authorities there had implemented measures to protect local producers by restricting imports, a move he believed had contributed to the country’s agricultural growth.

He called on government to emulate such measures and ensure policies promoted domestic production and improved incomes for farmers.

Dr Nyaaba also urged the government to fulfil its commitment to source more food for the School Feeding Programme from local farmers, saying increased local procurement would significantly reduce post-harvest losses and stimulate agricultural production.

Source: GNA

World Food Prize Foundation Announces Top 10 for the 2026 Innovate for Impact Challenge

Jul 20, 2026

The World Food Prize Foundation announced today the top 10 for the 2026 Innovate for Impact Challenge, a $50,000 competition for early-stage, for-profit AgTech startups from around the world.

Selected from a pool of more than 1,500 initial applicants spanning the globe, this year’s semi-finalists represent the next generation of entrepreneurs developing scalable solutions to reduce food loss, improve agricultural productivity, strengthen food safety, advance climate resilience and build more sustainable food systems.

“Each year, the Innovate for Impact Challenge demonstrates the extraordinary ingenuity of entrepreneurs who are redefining what’s possible for global agriculture and food security,” said Mashal Husain, President, World Food Prize Foundation. “This year’s finalists are transforming scientific breakthroughs into practical solutions with the potential for impact at scale. Their work reflects the bold thinking and collaborative spirit needed to nourish a growing world.”

The 2026 Innovate for Impact Challenge top 10 semi-finalists are:

• AgricFresh (Cameroon): A solar-powered, IoT-enabled cold storage system that extends the shelf life of fruits and vegetables from five to 30 days while connecting smallholder farmers directly to buyers, reducing post-harvest losses and increasing incomes.
• Biotech4Life Soluções (Brazil): A circular biorefinery platform that converts shrimp farming residues into biofertilizers and biostimulants, helping farmers reduce synthetic fertilizer use while improving crop yields and creating value from agricultural waste.
• CeluNova (Mexico): A sustainable materials company transforming discarded pineapple leaves into tree-free absorbent materials for hygiene products, creating new income opportunities for farmers while reducing agricultural waste and open-field burning.
• Ciencia y Tecnología de Fagos SciPhage S.A.S. (Colombia): A scalable bacteriophage platform that replaces antibiotics in livestock production, helping combat antimicrobial resistance while improving animal health, food safety and productivity.
• Cooling Crops (Israel): Develops patented sprayable biostimulants that restore soil, cool crops, improve water retention, and protect yields from heat, frost and land degradation using natural, scalable technology.
• Lyrata Inc. (Canada): Developer of SmartSoil™, a reusable, biodegradable growing medium designed to replace conventional substrates in controlled-environment agriculture, reducing emissions, improving crop health and lowering production costs.
• metaBIX Biotech (Uruguay): An AI-powered biosurveillance platform that predicts disease outbreaks in livestock through environmental sampling and molecular diagnostics, enabling producers to prevent outbreaks before they occur.
• Michroma (United States): A precision fermentation company producing stable, natural food colorants from fungi, providing sustainable alternatives to synthetic dyes while reducing land, water and resource use.
• Tana Lab (Indonesia): An AI-driven biological crop protection platform that combines microbial science, diagnostics and regenerative soil health solutions to reduce dependence on chemical agricultural inputs.
• Umami Meats B.V. (Netherlands): A cultivated seafood company producing fish biomass for food, pet nutrition and bioactive ingredients through cell cultivation, helping reduce pressure on wild fisheries while delivering a safe, traceable protein source.

Collectively, these semi-finalists showcase innovations spanning biotechnology, artificial intelligence, precision agriculture, circular economy solutions, sustainable materials, food safety and climate-smart production systems.

From this top 10 list,  three finalists will be selected to participate in a live pitch round at the World Food Prize Foundation’s annual Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa, October 20-22, 2026. They will present their ventures to an international panel of judges representing agriculture, science, investment and entrepreneurship.

Now in its second year, the Innovate for Impact Challenge has already demonstrated the breadth and creativity of AgTech entrepreneurs whose ideas have the potential to reshape agriculture and accelerate progress toward a more food-secure world.

Last year, in its inaugural year, Argentinian start-up APOLO Biotech won the Challenge for its pioneering RNA-based technology that helps farmers reduce reliance on synthetic pesticides, with Nigeria’s Vet Konect and India’s Capsber Agriscience rounding out the finalists.

About the World Food Prize: The World Food Prize is an international award that honors individuals who have improved the quality, quantity or availability of food worldwide. The Prize was founded by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, recipient of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, for his work that contributed to increases in agricultural outputs which was termed the Green Revolution. Since then, the Prize has been awarded to 56 distinguished individuals during the Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue. The Dialogue, also known as the Borlaug Dialogue, is a week of events dedicated to an issue surrounding food insecurity or hunger each year.

Four ideas that can help Ghana preserve food security when the next drought hits

Jul 20, 2026

Ghana’s food security situation has officially entered a crisis phase following a dry spell in eight of the country’s 16 regions.

In the middle of what is supposed to be the major rainy season, several parts of the country have had little to no rainfall over the last two months. “This situation prevented some farmers from preparing their farmlands for production while those who were able to prepare their land could not sow due to the absence of moisture

Most of the crops, especially maize and groundnut, have reached their critical wilting points,” Minister for Food and Agriculture Dr. Bryan Acheampong told a media briefing in Accra which he addressed alongside the Ministers of Finance and Defence.

At a place like Abease in the Bono Region, there was no rainfall between July 10 and Aug. 12, a continuous 5-week period of dryness. The Upper West Region has had only 575mm of rainfall this year compared to 982mm by the same period last year, an almost 50% reduction.

These droughts triggered by climate change are cyclical incidents that the nation grapples with repeatedly. I covered a similar dry spell situation in 2015 which we documented in this JoyNews Hotline documentary titled, LOST HARVEST.

At the ministers’ press briefing, a journalist with the Daily Searchlight Newspaper Nana Poku asked this very thoughtful question; “What long-term solutions, policies or programs are you putting in place to deal with this, because it is going to recur, so we will not come back and be asking for alms?” Just like many fellow Ghanaian citizens, I have some ideas on what should be done going forward and that prompted me to write this article.

But the truth is that these ideas are nothing new. Those in authority know what should be done but just don’t have the political will to act. I will still repeat them here.

But before I get to those, let’s lay bare the severity of the challenge at hand.What exactly is happening?871,000 hectares of cultivated farmlands across the country have been destroyed as a result of the dry spell as of Aug. 20, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

These farmlands belong to 435,872 farmers who invested a cumulative 3.5 billion Ghana Cedis (US$220 million) in their farming activities and were expecting to generate 10.4 billion Ghana Cedis (US$660 million) in revenue by the end of the farming season. But all that has been lost to the dry spell.

That 10.4 billion Ghana Cedis loss constitutes 5% of Ghana’s agricultural sector GDP. Farmers growing rice, yam, sorghum, millet, soybean, groundnut and yam have all been impacted. But that is not the full picture.

The government says almost one million (928,500) farmers cropping 1.8 million hectares of farmlands are at risk of having their crops destroyed. These farmers have invested 7.4 billion Ghana Cedis (US$471 million) in their farming activities since the start of the season and were expecting 22.2 billion Ghana Cedis (US$1.5 billion) in revenues.

They are at risk of losing it all. This projected loss is equivalent to 10% of Ghana’s agricultural GDP.

The government says it has been advised by experts that the dry spell will end soon. It will thus launch a replanting support program to provide farmers with fast-maturing seeds and other inputs, so they plant in the minor rainy season in the southern part of the country from September.

In the meantime, the government has banned the export of grains including maize, rice, and soybean until the situation normalizes.

The government says it will tap into the ECOWAS Grain Reserve and partner with the private sector to import 300,000 metric tons of maize and 150,000 metric tons of rice to provide food support to vulnerable farmers who have lost their crops. An additional 26,000 metric tons of poultry feed will be imported.

The government says it will give about 928,523 farmers a cash cushioning amount of 1,000 Ghana Cedis (US$64) per hectare as partial cover for their lost investment.

The Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam says the government is raising 8 billion Ghana Cedis (US$500 million) to fund a crisis response program.

The government has already secured 2.4 billion Ghana Cedis (US$155 million) from development partners for the program and 2.5 billion Ghana Cedis (US$60 million) has been raised internally, whiles efforts continue to raise the rest.

So, how did we get here in the first place? And what should be done so we don’t run into worse food insecurity challenges when the next drought strikes?

Here are four recycled ideas.

Need for strategic food stocks

First, does it even make sense that as a nation, we have no strategic grain stocks and now find ourselves scrambling to import grains as an emergency measure after being hit with just two months of a dry spell?

The finance minister acknowledged at the press briefing that the imports will likely impact the country’s already weak Cedis.

As a country that’s highly dependent on agriculture and with our history of vulnerability to climatic fluctuations, there is no justification that we do not have strategic grain stocks to serve as a buffer against unexpected shortages.

One of the mandates of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) established in 2010 is to purchase surplus cereals from farmers at the end of farming seasons and release them during lean seasons to help manage price volatility.

If NAFCO was living up to its mandate, its stores shouldn’t be dry by now and should at least have some stocks of grains to push onto the local market.

NAFCO holds strategic food reserve stocks for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) under its Regional Food Security Reserve Program. Amazingly, the government has not seen the need to use NAFCO to do the same for Ghana so there are grains to rely on in times like this.

Going forward, the government must resource institutions like NAFCO to construct and maintain more grain storage facilities. Every nation must know that there will once in a while come tough times like this when the weather fails.

We need more storage facilities and an efficient distribution system to quickly release reserves to areas in need during emergencies.

We probably need a parliament-approved regulation to back the implementation of policies governing the management, maintenance, and usage of food stock reserves to ensure governments take it seriously.

Improve irrigation facilities

Ghana has had an Irrigation Development Authority since 1977 with a mandate to develop and construct small-scale irrigation systems for farmers.

Although it is under the supervision of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, GIDA has a broad mandate and can borrow money from the open market for its development programs.

Unfortunately, after almost 50 years of establishment, and despite the countless natural water bodies available across the country, only about 3% of farmlands in Ghana are irrigated.

As the Minister for Food and Agriculture said in this recent World Bank article, “a lack of access to irrigation stifles the resilience of agriculture in Ghana.” The article co-authored with various World Bank officials observed; “Farmers bear the brunt of shifting weather patterns and extreme events as the farming system is predominantly rain-fed.” Relying solely on rain-fed agriculture for our food production in the face of increasing climate variability and unpredictable weather patterns leaves our food systems vulnerable.

Development and expansion of irrigation systems that can ensure a consistent water supply for crops regardless of rainfall patterns, can reduce the risks associated with droughts.

Additionally, integrating advanced techniques like soil moisture management and rainwater harvesting can further mitigate the risks associated with erratic weather.

Sadly, the much-touted One-Village One-Dam initiative the current administration rolled out in 2017 has become a ‘snafu’. If the promised dams were available, the dry spell would not be this bad because the dams would have held some water following the first rains.

Investment in seed systems

Seeds remain the fundamental building blocks of agriculture. They are the primary source from which plants grow. If you get every aspect of production right, have the appropriate irrigation facilities, use the right fertilizers, and do not use quality seeds, nothing much will be gained from the field. But if you grow quality seeds that have been improved to be drought tolerant, it is possible to still have okay yields even in the face of drought spells.

Seeds that are bred for specific environmental conditions, such as drought-tolerant, water-use efficient, and heat-resistant seeds, can help farmers adapt to climate change and its associated challenges. It matters less whether the seeds are open-pollinated varieties, hybrids, genetically modified organisms, or whatever.

Farmers simply need improved seeds that are climate resilient and perform better than landraces so that even in instances when rains fail, there will still be something to salvage on the fields. Statistics show less than 30% of farmers in the country grow improved seed varieties and government needs to take steps to help boost the numbers.

Unfortunately, state institutions like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, universities, and other research institutions developing improved seed varieties are not properly funded by the government.

Appropriate seed distribution systems are also non-existent.

This must change going forward if we will have the capacity to survive future drought spells. For maximum impact, these improved seeds should be coupled with supportive policies, effective extension services, and ongoing research to address the specific needs of different regions.

Let’s plant more trees and protect existing ones

This is a point I won’t belabour because it is a well-known fact that trees are integral to ensuring climate resilience. They have the ability to preserve climates and provide a cooling environment even in moments of dry spells to ensure productive farming.

Trees can soak up excess rainwater and increase the soil’s capacity to store water. Some native trees can send their roots deep into the soil to access groundwater and redistribute it through their root systems.

Enough of the destruction of forests through illegal mining and illegal logging. As the popular saying goes, when the last tree dies, the last man dies. Let’s work to preserve the environment as the sure way to protect our food production systems.