South African farmers coming to Ghana

South African farmers are set to enter Ghana to start commercial farming according to reports reaching ghanabusinessnews.com.

An organization known as GHANSA is organizing and encouraging South African farmers who want to move to Ghana an agriculture news site Farming has reported.

The report quoted James Smith of GHANSA as saying that the organization is making efforts to move South African farmers to Ghana.

According to him, the Ghanaian government has agreed to allocate land to his organization for onward allocation to South African farmers who are interested in faming, raising livestock and poultry in Ghana.

“We were in Ghana in December and saw the tremendous opportunities in agriculture and mining. Afterwards a Ghanaian representative of ours contacted the new president, John Atta Mills, and he wanted to be part of such an initiative,” he said.

Smith said the Ghana government is keen to have South African farmers with skills and knowledge boost the country’s agriculture. According to him, despite fertile land and lots of rain, Ghana imports basic food such as rice and chicken. He said South African farmers interested in moving to Ghana, would have to pay for their move and import their own equipment, adding that, land would not become the farmers’ property.

By the terms of the arrangement, South African farmers won’t be charged import taxes and GHANSA will help them with the allocation of land, housing and schools. In return, they’ll have to pay GHANSA a percentage of their annual turnover.

GHANSA, the report indicated, according to Smith, would help farmers with experience and knowledge get investors if they do not have the necessary capital, and urged farmers wanting to expand their operations to be part of the programme.

Smith however, said while there is not much violence in Ghana, fraud is common, but he gave the assurance that government would protect farmers against exploitation.

A senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) , Dr. David Zounmenou was quoted as saying, “the recent peaceful power transfer in Ghana has contributed to a stable political environment. The former president did a lot to help farmers with input from government,” he said.

“The new government,” he added, “is committed to the further development of the economy.”

He added that Ghana is one of the preferred destinations for foreign direct investment in West Africa. “It’s the only country in the region capable of achieving extreme poverty eradication, one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015.”

Zounmenou admitted that much still needs to be done in terms of rural infrastructure, but the minimum is in place.

Ghana is predominantly an agriculture economy. The sector employs about 60 per cent of the population and contributes about 35% of GDP. The sector contributes about 40 to 50% of total foreign exchange earnings, but only about 16% of arable land is used for agriculture in Ghana.

And the country imports almost everything it eats. Ghana produces only 21% of its rice and about 42% of its maize requirements, according to Agriculture Minister, Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi.

The country is the second largest producer of cocoa in the world after Cote d’Ivoire.

Recently however, huge investments are coming in from foreign companies into developing biofuels in the country for export. So far these companies have acquired large tracts of land for the purpose.

The current government has however, hinted in its 2009 budget that it would concentrate on agriculture.

Meanwhile, land issues are complicated in Ghana. Efforts are now being put into harmonising the country’s land laws, and the activities of all public institutions responsible for managing land issues.

A greater portion of cases in the country’s courts are land matters. Indeed, land issues in Ghana have led to the phenomena of ‘land guards’, where individuals who have invested in land, hire and arm groups of mostly young people to protect these lands. The development has led to deadly clashes in the past.

It is welcome news, if South African farmers are coming to Ghana, because if the system is properly managed, the agriculture sector in Ghana would improve and that certainly could impact the country’s economy tremendously.