Public-Private partnerships : a strategic action for inclusive agricultural development

It would be very convenient if after a hard day’s work one could walk to a small shop in a community to buy freshly steamed ‘nkontomire’ packaged nicely at an affordable price. Or better still, a home-delivered nicely canned okro stew and all one has to do is heat it up for eating.

Many agricultural commodities can be produced in abundance, processed, transported and effectively distributed within the communities to ensure easy access by consumers. 

However, the question to ask is, ‘Has Ghana’s agricultural sector developed enough to be transformed from a subsistent one into an agro-industrial production, and if not, what strategic action do we need?’ 

Public-private partnership arrangements are increasingly becoming a strategy for agricultural development in many Sub-Saharan African countries. In Ghana, such arrangements can provide an opportunity for pro-poor agricultural development.

 Partnership is defined as ‘a joint effort usually between public and private entities in which each contributes to planning, commits resources, shares risks and benefits and conducts activities to accomplish a mutual goal’. Inclusive development, on the other hand, involves the inclusion of resource-poor smallholders and all other stakeholders along a value chain to drive innovation and create markets for mutual benefits.

Challenges facing agricultural dev

The agricultural sector is key to the overall development of Ghana. The national development agenda envisages the sector to lead economic growth, structural transformation and maximise the benefits of the accelerated growth. 

Although Ghana’s agriculture is a major growth opportunity, there are still fundamental challenges hindering its progress. 

For instance, although agriculture employs about 65 per cent of the country’s population, it remains largely subsistence, characterised by poor productivity and very low value addition. 

The sector is also saddled with inefficiencies in various value chain developments. 

There is inadequate post-harvest technology; lack of market access due to the poor quality of products; underdeveloped capacity of farmer-based organisations; some of which operate mainly at the national level with no membership at all at the local level; overdependence on rains and use of very low technology and farming equipment.

 In addition to these, there are inadequate infrastructure in several farming communities; lack of knowledge, skills and expertise for building the capacity of value chain actors, especially at the grassroots level; unavailability and/or lack of access to credit due to the risky nature of agriculture business and inadequate market information, especially on smallholders. 

Also, there exists in many communities, traditional and social taboos which largely affect women in their acquisition of land and productivity; most land rights and tenure arrangements do not support sustainable production; and the limited availability of electricity, all of which negatively affect  agro-processing.

Partnership arrangements.

To reverse this trend, governments have employed several strategies to modernise and enhance productivity in the agricultural sector. One key strategy being used now is the formation of partnership arrangements. These arrangements usually involve government or public entities, private companies, NGOs, universities, research institutes and financial institutions. 

In line with this strategy, the government of Ghana, with support from the World Bank and USAID, is implementing the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP) with a US $150 million fund. This project aims at increasing on-farm productivity and value addition in food security crops (rice, maize, soybeans, vegetables) chains within the Accra Plains and Savannah Accelerated Development Authority zone. 

The GCAP is consistent with Ghana’s Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy and also linked to the Medium-Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan; both geared towards modernising the agricultural sector. 

This project also has a matching grant to support private investment in agriculture across a range of enterprises such as large-scale commercial farming, agricultural processing and marketing, industries and small-scale entrepreneurial farming. This is a laudable initiative, especially since the government does not have enough resources and capacity to address the numerous complex challenges of agriculture. The private sector is very much needed to collaborate with various sector ministries to efficiently provide relevant goods and services. 

The role of the private sector could include agro-industrial processing to reduce seasonality and enhance the shelf life of many perishable agricultural commodities. 

This will also create employment for rural and urban youth. The private sector can partner the government in the provision of transportation infrastructure (roads and durable trucks) in farming communities; and also provide agricultural equipment. They can help in the effective supply of certified seeds and water-efficient drip irrigation systems for all-year-round agricultural production. 

However, it is worth noting that the private sector cannot achieve these in a ‘hostile’ environment. 

The effectiveness of the private sector in achieving its aims requires a strong government; one with adequate human, institutional and energy resources that gives incentive for private business organisations to use and expand their capacity. 

It is therefore necessary for the public sector ministries, departments and agencies to establish policies and sound regulatory framework to ensure that private-public partnerships are effective in addressing agricultural development plans. The public sector should also remove all bureaucratic processes and barriers for participation in partnerships to ensure inclusive development. To this end, opportunities should be created for the private sector, and all other relevant stakeholders (including smallholders) to meet regularly, discuss challenges in the sector, design programmes and implement the strategies together. Above these, donors are needed to provide funding and also dialogue with the government to align their interventions to national development policies.

Public-private partnership

It is widely accepted that the real, complex and multi-faceted challenges of Ghana’s agriculture sector calls for public-private partnership, but there is also limited knowledge of the functioning and outcomes of agricultural partnership arrangements in the country. 

Thus a better understanding is needed on the entrepreneurial processes or mechanisms employed by partnerships to create institutional changes in agricultural value chains; how their activities improved access to remunerative markets and the impact on the livelihoods of smallholders.

Academia and research centres in the country also have a role to play in ensuring that partnerships lead to inclusive agricultural development. 

These centres can provide, through their case studies, an in-depth or holistic overview of the partnerships by validating models that are effective and can be replicated. The outcomes of such research can provide both public and private sectors with a benchmark for good practices in partnerships..

In this regard, the University of Ghana and the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, with support from Wageningen University and the Dutch Government are engaged in a research project to generate knowledge and learning on partnerships. 

The project is based on the notion that agriculture can stimulate many opportunities in the non-farm sector to enhance economic growth, but a comprehensive and integrated approach is required to achieve this. 

Indeed, if Ghana’s agenda of ‘modernising agriculture’ is to be achieved, strong partnerships are needed to move the sector from a subsistence level to an agro-industrial production one.

The writer is a post-doctoral researcher at CSIR/STEPRI.