Make land ownership force for production — Nsarkoh

An Executive Coach and a former Executive at Unilever, Yaw Nsarkoh, has proposed to the government to reorganise land ownership to make it a force of production in the country.

That, when done, according to him, will help to scale up Ghana’s domestic production of goods to reduce the risk on the economy.

The calls come at a time when the country’s unstructured land tenure system has been identified as one of the major setbacks to the country’s accelerated enhancement in agriculture and other real sectors of the economy.

Plagued with numerous challenges regarding ownership and multiple sale, land ownership in Ghana has also been noted to be one the setbacks to investment attraction as investors, local and foreign are forced through harrowing ordeals in their quest to own land to undertake projects in agricultural, real estate or industrial sectors.

Several attempts have been made by past and present governments to change the paradigm but those efforts are yet to fruit.

Mr Nsarkoh explained that 33 per cent of Ghana’s population who are employed in agriculture resort to subsistence farming. However a more sustainable and diversified agricultural sector is essential for Ghana's long-term food security and economic development.

“33 per cent of our population is employed in agriculture but most of that subsistence, our land management regime is absolutely bad,” he said when he made an appearance on the Graphic Business Twitter Dialogue Series on the theme: “Ghana’s Trade Vulnerability - Why Ghana Imports more than Exports”.

Making reference to the country’s almost static agricultural sector, he said: “If you cannot eat you simply cannot develop, so agricultural modernisation is the priority of any development export and especially around remodelling of the social relations and the means of production,” he said.

Mr Nsarkoh said “We are unable to feed ourselves. Our agriculture has many features of a historical accident; trapped in peasant subsistence modes. No different from how it was done in 1900.

Ghana has a significant potential for non-traditional exports, which are products and commodities other than the country's traditional exports such as cocoa, gold and oil.”

These non-traditional exports can diversify the economy, reduce dependence on a few key sectors and contribute to sustainable economic growth.

Trade Vulnerabilities Report 2022

According to the country’s Trade Vulnerabilities Report 2022, a report that provides insights into the performance, competitiveness and trends of Ghana’s international trade, the value of imports exceeded that of exports by GH₵4.5 billion in 2022 with Africa and North America being the only continents where the value of exports exceeded imports.

Similarly, the number of countries that Ghana imported from was higher than the number it exported to.

The report indicates that Ghana remains predominantly dependent on exports of primary products, primarily gold, crude petroleum and cocoa.

Two commodities (gold and crude petroleum) constitute over two-thirds of all exports.

The reliance on a limited number of trading partners is illustrated by four countries (Switzerland, China, Canada, South Africa) making up over half of all exports, and six countries (China, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States of America, India, Switzerland) contributing to over half of all imports.

Mr Nsarkoh explained that agriculture played a crucial role in the economies of developing countries such that modernising the sector could lead to increased productivity, higher incomes for farmers and overall economic growth.

He added that by modernising agriculture, Ghana could potentially increase its agricultural exports to generate foreign exchange earnings and improve its trade balance.

According to him, the country’s non-traditional export has the potential to transform the economy, and, therefore, there is the need to put in place systems to make that successful.