From homes and restaurants to schools and ceremonies, rice is now a daily fixture in the diets of millions of Ghanaians. The increasing per capita consumption of rice by Ghanaians shows no sign of slowing down.

Rice has become the second most consumed cereal in Ghana and is set to surpass maize as the country’s most widely consumed cereal. Increasing consumption of rice is being driven largely by the convenience and ease of storing and preparing milled rice in homes and businesses, and rice’s ability to pair with almost every type of Ghanaian soup and stew. Rice’s importance and dominance in the Ghanaian palette will surely continue to grow in the coming years.

Yet, curiously Ghana remains unable to position itself to maximize the benefits from this internal demand in its own borders. Despite abundant fertile land, favorable weather conditions, extensive water resources, and hardworking farmers, many Ghanaians still prefer imported rice from Thailand, Vietnam, and India over rice grown locally. There has been national rice campaigns, government and international investments in the rice industry, yet indigenous rice has failed to establish itself as a preferred option within the diet of the largest consumers of rice in Ghana. Many have blamed imported rice and Ghanaians love for foreign products as the main reason why the local rice industry is unable to meet its full production potential. For Ghana, achieving self-sufficiency in rice production is not simply an agricultural goal. It is essential for food security, industrial development, job creation, and national pride.

But the inability of local rice to meet demand or establish in the market is far more nuanced than just production or imports.

Having spent close to a decade working with and visiting smallholder rice farmers in major rice growing communities like Avalavi, Asutsuare, Akuse, Bontanga, Hohoe, Battor, Torgome and now serving as President of the Ghana Rice Federation, I believe the conversation around the inability of Ghanas indigenous rice industry to translate potential to achievement has often focused on the wrong problem. The issue is not merely production volume or an importation problem even though these play a major role by .

The issue is the lack of a strong understanding of the needs of the consumer market. More accurately, Ghana is unable to consistently meet the standards of rice its citizens and industry prefer to consumers. Importers of rice have cracked the consumer market. Increasing production does not meet demand. Giving customers what they want creates demand which then creates scalable profit incentives for investors and value chain actors to increase production. Producers must meet unique consumer demand.

Meeting the demands of a unique market

The first step toward ending rice importation is understanding why many Ghanaians — particularly urban consumers — prefer imported rice. This requires understanding the rice consumer market in Ghana.

The Ghanaian rice market can broadly be divided into two segments: Urban consumers and Rural consumers

Urban consumption of rice is driven largely by restaurants, hotels, caterers, and to a lesser extent middle-class household. Rural consumers, especially those in medium-sized towns and surrounding villages consume most local rice production. Understanding this distinction in markets is essential to breaking the dominance of imported rice and the preferences of consumers.

Preferences of urban consumers and rural consumers

Most imported rice is sold to urban consumers because urban consumers generally prefer long-grain rice that is aromatic, fluffy, and separates into individual grains easily when cooked. These characteristics are consistently found in Thai rice and Basmati rice. This consistency makes imported rice the preferred choice for restaurants, hotels, food vendors, and many households. Also most urban consumption of rice is not by households its mostly restaurants, fast food chains and eateries.

Rural consumers, on the other hand, are often more price-sensitive and therefore largely purchase broken imported rice. Broken rice tends to become sticky and moist when cooked in large quantities — characteristics very similar to locally produced rice. For many rural consumers therefore local rice and broken rice are excellent substitutes, especially when prices are comparable or not far off each other. When prices are low for imported rice they switch to imported rice hence the rice gluts we frequently hear of on the news and during rice campaigns.

Urban consumers, however, generally dislike sticky rice a situation commonly exhibited by local rice because farmers do not dry to the right moisture content, may have large quantities of broken rice in their milled rice or pass of medium or short grain rice as long grain rice. The dislike for local rice  is compounded by the fact that local rice may sometimes contain impurities such as stones, paddy grains, or discolored grains, many consumers therefore completely reject it in favor of imported alternatives.

The Untapped Strength of Ghanaian Rice

Ironically, local rice possesses significant advantages over the imported variety. Ghana-grown rice is often more aromatic and has a richer, sweeter taste than imported rice. In blind tastings of high quality local rice, many consumers actually prefer the flavor of local rice.

However, taste alone does not determine market success.

Its inability to consistently separate when cooked in large quantities — combined with inconsistent quality control — makes local rice unattractive to the demographic that consumes the most rice in Ghana. And any product that consistently fails to meet customer expectations will struggle in the marketplace. Imported rice consistently meets customer preferences and so paired with the convenience there is huge demand for imported rice among the most important demographic for rice consumption in Ghana.

Why Local Rice Often Fails to Meet Expectations

The sticky and moist nature of local rice is largely the result of poor post-harvest and production practices, including Improper drying to the correct moisture content, the mixing of different rice varieties during milling and drying, Passing medium-grain rice off as long-grain rice, farmers planting multiple rice varieties on the same field or in close proximity and weak quality control systems throughout the value chain. These problems are especially common among smallholder farmers who produce the bulk of rice in Ghana.

Importantly, these are not irrational actions by farmers.

Farmers like all rational investors produce to meet market demand at an acceptable profit margin— and rural consumers generally do not demand any better. Urban markets where demand is drive largely by restaurants, eateries and food chains have higher standards an need to be consistent to meet their own customer expectations. The local rice industry, dominated by smallholder farmers therefore completely ignores the highly profitable urban market which is not as price sensitive as rural consumers. But why do they ignore this market? Because the barriers to meeting expectations for a smallholder farmer or miller is high – sustained investment to improve quality, sustained investment to consistently meet expectations over a period. And for an investor with a small budget and family to feed it is far more profitable to meet the needs of an undemanding rural consumer who will return a modest profit immediately than a potentially profitable customer who expects payment plans, needs convincing to overcome their poor perception of local rice.

The Invisible Resistance Facing Local Rice investors

Increasingly aggregators, marketers are looking to market local rice to urban consumers. These local investors convinced of the superior taste of local rice often encounter an invisible resistance from urban consummers they do not fully understand. Many then tend to blame cheap imports and Ghanaian preference for foreign goods. But the problem is deeper.

Many are buying a product designed to appeal to one consumer – rural and attempting to market to another consumer with different expectations – the urban consumer. Even more disturbing is that the highly lucrative segment of the market which is supplying to restaurants and eateries is extrememly difficult to achieve because of the lack of consistency in quality from local indigenous farmers. To get around this problem some determined businesses and individuals become financiers and prefinance rice farmers but quickly find out that the lack of ingrained standards, infrastructure and general lack of understanding of the expectation of quality between farmer and financiers increase the cost of production unnecessarily.

The issue then becomes a market-quality problem and not simply an import problem. Especially when Ghanaians are willing to pay for high quality rice.

Ghanaians Are Willing to Pay more for Quality

An interesting reality is that Thai rice on the Ghanaian market can sell for between 140 and 180 Ghana cedis for a 5kg bag, while Vietnamese and Ghanaian rice can sell for roughly 50–70% of that price. This proves something important:

Ghanaians are willing and able to pay premium prices for rice that meets their preferences. Should indigenous rice with its superior taste and aroma be able to do these four things; separate into individual grains when cooked, be aromatic, be free from impurities and be of consistent quality every time over a period of 1 year,then the perception of local rice will begin to change. Demand will follow and with demand will come increased investment in the sector which will drive production up.

Interventions in the rice sector should then lean heavily beyond production also towards meeting these four key pillars. Value chain practices that ensure these will lead to a demand for local rice or make it competitive to imported rice giving consumers a genuine choice between local and imported rice. One way will be to finance a small group of smallholder farmers producing high quality rice and gradually add more farmers committed to standards and kick out those who do not meet these standards. As their reputation and product branding grows so will demand and so will other farmers seeing the profit potential be incentivized to produce high quality rice. Another will be to acquire large areas of land and sublease to commercial rice farmers. But these activities will require financial commitment and the active contribution of policymakers, technical support and farmer based organizations like the Rice Federation. And this is where rice importation can play an important part in growing our local rice industry.

 The Rice Problem Ghana May attempt to solve the Wrong Way

This is where the conversation becomes controversial. Nigeria banned rice importation so why not Ghana. Imported after all is killing the local industry. I disagree. Ghanaian rice is superior in aroma and taste to imported rice and can compete with imported rice. Why suddenly ban an inferior product when this product can help finance the development of Ghana’s rice industry?

Yes. The Bull in the china shop should instead be viewed as a goose that could lay golden eggs.

Instead of outright bans, Ghana should impose a special development levy on imported rice specifically dedicated to financing investments in the local rice industry and the necessary infrastructure – a rice board to coordinate policy and interventions, incentives for investors – local and foreign to pour into the industry and most importantly incentives to create demand for locally grown rice.

Whatever Ghana’s huge rice import billeven a modest 5% levy on a $500 million value of imported goods, could generate between $10 million and $25 million annually, depending on import fluctuations to finance indigenous rice capacity. These funds could be ring-fenced exclusively for developing the rice sector and an aggressive and accountable milestone based system put in place independent of political interference.

The revenue generated could finance transformative interventions that encourage private investors such as:

• Government acquisition and development of large irrigated land banks along the Volta Basin
• Commercial farming zones for medium- and large-scale rice production
• Centralized drying and warehousing facilities for offtake by aggregators, industry players, consumers.
• Government schemes that pay smallholder farmers on time through the banking system – rural banks or otherwise.
• Farmer training and extension centers in major rice enclaves
• Affordable financing schemes for commercial and smallholder rice production

In acquiring large land banks, commercial farmers could then sublease parcels ranging from 200 to 1,000 acres under strict performance conditions. Major rice importers themselves should even be encouraged to transition into local rice production through partnerships or direct investment. Instead of fighting importers, Ghana should incentivize them to become producers while supporting smallholder farmer livelihoods.

 In this model, imported rice therefore becomes the mechanism that finances the destruction of import dependency itself. The bull we claim is destroying the China shop becomes the goose laying the golden eggs. Even more importantly the relatively high standards of imported rice becomes the benchamark for local producers to meet or exceed. Should we become serious we can become exporters of rice.

These proposals require deeper conversations such as implementing practical safeguards would to prevent politically connected individuals from acquiring farming allocations to then resell it, interested organizations should provide a substantial security deposit to the Bank of Ghana and calculated per acre allocated. Farming activity should commence within six months. Failure to begin production would result in partial forfeiture of the deposit. If farming proceeds successfully, the deposit could later be refunded at prevailing treasury bill rates after deducting administrative costs. This would discourage land hoarding while ensuring only serious investors participate.

Conclusion

Ending rice importation in Ghana will not happen through slogans, patriotism, or abrupt import bans. It will happen when Ghanaian rice consistently meets the expectations of major consumers of rice.

The future of Ghana’s rice industry depends not merely on increasing production, but on improving obsessively what little we currently produce by ensuring farmers grow the available Ministry of Agric approved varieties, harvesting and processing it correctly, and delivering consistent quality to the market.

If Ghana can align production with consumer preference while intelligently using import revenues to finance domestic expansion, the country can depend on the commitment of stakeholders build a competitive rice industry capable of replacing imports over a relatively short time. With the legal and moral authority of government, commitment of technical institutions like Center for Scientific and Industrial Research, Irrigation Development Authority and Farmer based organizations like the Ghana Rice Federation Ghana can convert its huge potential into an achievement that we can all be proud of.

The solution can never be emotional protectionism. The solution is strategic transformation through ruthless and consistent execution.

The author, Kofi Akuamoah Boateng Baidoo, is the Executive Director of the Ghana Rice Federation.

Email: kofi@ghanarice.org

www.ghanarice.org