IEA proposes farming pathway for National Service graduates

Ghana should use the National Service programme as a pathway to move young graduates into agriculture instead of leaving them to compete for limited jobs after completing their service, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has proposed.

Director of Research at the IEA, Alexander Bilson Darku, said the government could create a database to track National Service personnel and connect them to opportunities in agriculture, particularly cocoa farming.

“We can create a database where these youth don’t only finish their national service and start looking for jobs that don’t exist, but to have a system where we can make things attractive in the economy for them, a significant number of them, to go into farming, and for that matter, cocoa farming,” he stated.

He made the comments in an interview with the media on Wednesday, September 2, 2026.

Darku said the initiative should be supported by policies that make farming attractive and profitable enough for graduates to consider it a viable career rather than relying solely on scarce formal-sector jobs.

“That will call for intentional government policy to make cocoa farming attractive,” he stated.

Darku pointed to Kenya, where he said agriculture has become an attractive business for many young people.

“If you go to Kenya, agriculture is, if I can use the word, a very sexy activity for most of the youth. Most of the youth love to engage in agriculture. We haven’t done that yet, something like that in Ghana,” he said.

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However, he noted that getting more young people into farming would require improvements in agricultural productivity.

“That can only be done well if we come up with policies to increase productivity in the agriculture sector,” he indicated.

He explained that a stronger agricultural sector could also support Ghana’s industrialisation drive by supplying factories with the raw materials they need.

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Darku also warned Ghana against relying too heavily on a few commodities for export revenue.

“It becomes a problem if you become over-reliant on one source of export revenue,” he said.

He called for the development of other productive sectors capable of generating export earnings and reducing the country’s exposure to fluctuations in global commodity prices.

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