The Minister for Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Eric Opoku, has warned that Ghana’s food economy had reached a critical state before the National Democratic Congress (NDC) assumed office in January 2025, noting that the country’s dependency on imported staples had become “alarming”.

Speaking at the Government’s Accountability Series at the Jubilee House on Monday, November 24, Mr Opoku said the urgency of the government’s agricultural transformation agenda “cannot be overemphasised”, given the severe structural weaknesses inherited earlier in the year.

According to the minister, as of 7 January 2025, Ghana was spending about $3 billion annually on the importation of basic food items such as rice, poultry, vegetable oils, sugar and processed products – goods he stressed “could and should be produced locally”.

This, he said, had drained the nation’s foreign exchange reserves, undermined domestic food self-sufficiency and left the economy exposed to external shocks.

Mr Opoku further highlighted the rapid escalation of food prices in recent years, noting that between 2022 and 2025 the cost of several staple commodities had more than doubled across major urban markets.

He described the most striking sign of the crisis as the “historic and unprecedented” food inflation rate of 61 per cent recorded in January 2023 under the previous administration.

Although inflation eased slightly thereafter, he said food prices “remained dangerously high”, significantly eroding purchasing power and pushing up the cost of living for millions of Ghanaians.

The Minister emphasised that the government’s current reforms aim to reverse these trends by boosting local production, strengthening food security and reducing the nation’s reliance on volatile international markets.