I hear Akufo-Addo urging people to eat made-in-Ghana foods.
The issue is that eating made-in-Ghana like everything else in Ghana has been paid a lot of lip-service. None of these people means it when they make these high-flying talk.
Do you remember when Mahama did same in the past? He even went to his house and counted all the things he had that were made in Ghana and published the list. After that what happened? Nothing. We are in 2019 and rice farmers and processors are complaining of low patronage while we import rice to the tune of $ 1.2 billion. He is here again talking about the same thing.
Rawlings is also talking about the same thing. He is even by far the biggest contributor to the neo-liberal regime we have in Ghana that prioritised mineral extraction above agriculture.
Now oil has been added to the mix. And yet with the minerals and oil owned and controlled by foreigners (again because of policies Rawlings pioneered which have been followed and entrenched by the others), the real benefit has not accrued to the Ghanaian.
The net effect is that poverty is increasing. About 400,000 more people fell below the poverty line between 2012 and 2017 according to the Ghana Living Standards Survey Round 7.
My emphasis is on the fact that majority of the poor and extremely poor in Ghana are farmers. In other words, poverty affects farmers more than any other economic group. The reasons for this are very clear and have been diagnosed by many studies and reports.
Is there a conversation around this? If not, then what is the use of farmers’ day?