IMPROVING AFRICAN AGRICULTURE SPENDING ... - Africa Adapt

GHANA’S AGRICULTURE SPENDING:
INCREASING THE FOCUS ON KEY SERVICES AND WOMEN FARMERS
SUMMARY
This report, based on extensive primary and secondary research, analyses the Ghanaian government’s
agriculture spending, assessing how well focused it is on the needs of smallholder farmers, especially women.
It concentrates on key services to farmers such as access to inputs, extension and agricultural research and
the extent to which the government is promoting sustainable agriculture. The report is based on extensive
secondary research, interviews with government officials, donors, academics and NGOs, and fieldwork in
Northern and Upper East Regions, where focus groups and individual interviews were held with small farmers
in seven villages.
Government spending on agriculture
Ghana has increased its spending on agriculture in recent years and allocates just under 10 per cent of its
budget to the sector. That said, considering that agriculture accounts for over a third of GDP, spending of
one tenth of the government budget is relatively low. To achieve annual agricultural growth of 6 per cent,
studies suggest that Ghana needs to devote around 14 per cent of government spending to agriculture. The
government’s allocation to the lead agriculture ministry – the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) - is
especially low, at 2.8 per cent of the total budget in 2011.
The government has produced an impressive range of policy documents to guide its agriculture spending.
However, we identify nine needed improvements.
Women farmers and their triple role
Women are the key actors in Ghanaian agriculture, constituting over half the agricultural labour force and
producing 70 per cent of the country’s food. Women constitute 95 per cent of those involved in agroprocessing
and 85 per cent of those in food distribution. Yet there appear to be no budget lines specifically
targeting women farmers in MOFA’s budget apart from the allocation to the Women in Agriculture Department
(WIAD). Yet WIAD’s budget is very small: Of MOFA’s GH¢ 221 million budget allocation in 2011, WIAD was to
receive GH¢ 867,762 – just 0.4 per cent.
The government has taken some steps to promote gender mainstreaming in MOFA, but the Gender and
Agricultural Development Strategy (GADS), developed in the late 1990s, has been largely unimplemented.
WIAD is the only one of 12 directorates in MOFA headed by a woman and the senior extension staff in Accra
are all male. MOFA’s failure to recognize the gender of the farmers it is meant to be supporting is holding
back food production and poverty reduction in Ghana. Women’s triple role – on the farm, in the household
and in the community – is a major barrier to increasing farm productivity. The government must broaden
its efforts to support women’s farm production and processing activities, especially to increase access to
simple labour-saving technologies.
Extension services
As much as 80 per cent of MOFA’s budget may well be spent on providing advice and training to farmers
while around half of MOFA’s staff – 3,000 people - are extension officers. Yet despite this spending, Ghana
has poor extension services with only 12 per cent of men-headed households and a minuscule 2 per cent
of female-headed households having access to extension. The service is a victim of a ban on recruitment of
public sector employees whereby no new recruitment can take place. Many staff also lack adequate means
of mobility, such as motorbikes, and salaries are low, making it even more difficult to attract talented staff.
The smallholder farmers interviewed identify a range of knowledge gaps that should be addressed by the
extension service to help improve their farm production, such as information on new varieties of maize and
sustainable agriculture techniques, including composting. Unfortunately, the current state of the extension
service means that farmers are largely losing out on these vital knowledge inputs.
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