The rolling out of the Country Agribusiness Partnership Framework (CAP-F) in the selected pilot countries is proceeding at a commendable pace, with Ghana being the latest country added to the list. 

On 30 July 2018, Mr Ibrahim Gourouza-Magagi, Grow Africa’s Head of West and Central Africa/CAP-F Coordinator officially kicked off Ghana’s Country Agribusiness Partnership Framework (CAP-F) implementation with a briefing to the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afiyie Akoto.

The briefing in Accra, Ghana, centred on CAP-F and its national structures that are to be established, as well as its potential to unlock private sector investment in agriculture through the creation of partnerships that align private sector commitments to Ghana’s National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP) priorities. This is in order to collectively achieve the country’s agricultural transformation goals. The high-level briefing, whose key output was to obtain buy-in from the country’s high level officials, officially marks the CAP-F kick-off in Ghana. 

Minister Akoto believes that a CAP-F Secretariat anchored within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture will certainly assure better follow-up of private sector commitments in support of the Ghana Planting for Food and Jobs programme.

The next step in the CAP-F process in Ghana entails the conducting of a stocktaking exercise, aimed at evaluating the existing agriculture sector landscape and to determine the level of in-country resourcing required for CAP-F implementation. This process will also produce an implementation roadmap to guide ongoing country CAP-F processes.

Whilst in Accra, Mr Gourouza also paid a courtesy visit to former Ghanaian President, John Kufuor Chairman of the John A Kufuor Foundation (JAK Foundation), which works to promote effective leadership as the catalyst for good governance, and socio-economic development through advocacy, programmatic interventions and strategic partnerships with likeminded organisations and institutions.

Grow Africa works with the JAK Foundation in the area of advancing rice self-sufficiency in the ECOWAS region. This includes increasing rice production and yield; promoting a regional local rice market as well as improving policy within the rice environment. All of these measures are geared at reducing to zero, by 2025, rice imports into the region.

According to the former President Kufuor, Grow Africa should play a key role towards the operationalisation of the ECOWAS Rice Offensive Programme. The former president concluded by stating that, “The rice self-sufficiency issue in ECOWAS should be tackled in a more integrated manner, solving the problem in only one particular country will not solve the problems in the entire region.”