Here's why GSA is adopting organic product certification

Farmers committed to organic cultivation are unable to distinguish their produce from conventionally grown alternatives in Ghana, which means both to compete in the same marketplace.

This state of affairs is unfortunate because organic producers are denied access to lucrative premium markets in Europe and North America where certified organic products command price premiums of between 20 and 40 percent.

To correct this structural injustice, Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) in partnership with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) convened a stakeholder engagement in Accra to advance the establishment of Ghana’s first nationally-managed ‘Organic Certification Scheme’.

The global organic food and beverage market was valued at over US$220billion in 2024 and is projected to surpass US$380billion by 2030. Europe alone represents more than a third of consumption and the EU’s ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ targets 25 percent of all agricultural land under organic production by end of the decade.

Supported by a robust testing and conformity assessment framework, the project is officially entering its final phase before implementation. The GSA certification is built on international standard ISO/IEC 17065, the standard for bodies certifying products, processes and services and is aligned with the European Union’s Organic Regulation 2018/848.

The scheme covers crops, horticultural products, fruit and vegetables – the commodities which define Ghana’s agricultural export identity.

For a country that grows cocoa, shea, cashew, tropical fruits, spices and vegetables, the opportunity is immense – but positioning without a passport, which is an approved certification, means nothing, GSA Director-General Prof. George Agyei notes.

“In international trade, that passport is certification; credible, traceable, internationally recognised certification.”

The Director-General revealed that this initiative is backed by significant investments in laboratory testing infrastructure and technical capacity, a trajectory accelerated by a strategic working visit during March 2025 to Indocert in Kerala, India.

Component Head-Invest for Jobs programme at GIZ Ghana Eunice Agyeiwah Agyepong, representing GIZ, observed that many businesses rely on foreign certification bodies at costs that effectively price smallholder farmers out of the very markets their labour sustains.

That is why the national organic certification scheme is so important.