President Nana Akufo-Addo, last Monday, named Owusu Afriyie Akoto, a PhD in Agricultural Economics, as the minister designate for agriculture, a sector which has long been touted as the backbone of Ghana’s economy, but which has been performing woefully in recent years.

Dr. Afriyie Akoto has been a strong critic of the out-gone NDC government, accusing it, in an October 2016 press conference, of presiding over a sluggish agric sector, and assuring that an NPP government would restore financing cuts to the sector and inject into it over GH?1 billion in the medium term.

“The poor annual growth (3.5% average in the last six years from 2010) in agriculture is just above half of the Malabo Declaration minimum target of 6.0% per-annum for all African Countries.

With population growth rate of 2.7% per annum, this means that Ghanaian agriculture is growing at a net rate of only 0.8% per capita per annum. If account is taken of rapid urbanisation typified by the Kayayei phenomenon, then agricultural growth per capita drops into negative value,” he said at that press conference.

The elections are over, and luckily for Dr Afriyie Akoto, after his party’s victory, he has been nominated to head the agric ministry, and if he manages to skip the hurdle being put his way by a group kicking against his nomination on account of his fondness for genetically modified foods, his job should be well cut out for him.

The sector, which was contributing as high as 50.8 percent to GDP in the second quarter of 2013, is now contributing around 20 percent, overtaken by the services sector as the largest contributor to GDP.

Some have said that is not a problem; indeed, former President Mahama often argued that it is only normal that once the country is developing, the services sector would overtake agriculture in terms of GDP contribution.

“For all the developed countries, contribution of agriculture to GDP is the smallest. But of course, it does not mean that you are not producing enough to feed yourself,” the former president argued.

Critics argue, however, that in real terms, the agric sector is performing poorly, and the NDC government was put on the defensive when it slashed budgetary allocation to the sector last year by GH?40million, despite growth stalling to 2.4 percent the year before against a 5.8% target.

The NPP argues that the situation where food imports have taken a chunk of domestic production, and now occupy a significant proportion of national food consumption, must be reversed.

“Between calendar year 2007 and 2015 the total value of imports of eight major food items together sky-rocketed by nearly seven-fold – from US$344 Million in 2007 to US$2.3 Billion in 2014 and to over US$2.1 Billion in 2015 (preliminary),” Dr Afriyie Akoto said at the October press conference.

During the same period, the total volume of imports of the eight items together escalated from 882,000 metric tonnes in 2007 to a peak of 1,343,000 metric tonnes in 2013, with slight dips in 2014 and 2015. These food items are rice, sugar, poultry, fish, wheat, vegetable oil, salt and vegetables”.

The 2015 import bill of US$2.1 Billion for the eight food items, he said, is equivalent to the total foreign exchange earnings from the country’s major export of cocoa in 2014/15.

“Looking at it from another perspective, it is more than the US$2 billion cocoa syndicated loans borrowed annually from foreign banks for the purchase of cocoa in crop year 2015/2016 and for the coming 2016/2017 cocoa crop.” he added.

For its unsatisfactory showing, the country’s agriculture sector is plagued by very well-known challenges, including lack of access to long term financing, low technology and machinery, post-harvest losses owing to poor roads and unavailable and/or inadequate storage facilities and the lack of irrigation dams.

Lending to the agriculture sector averages about a measly 4 percent, which the central bank has been trying to reverse by introducing, in October last year, a scheme which will see it guarantee for commercial banks to lend to the sector.

The sector is also unable to attract significant investment from the private sector, especially, foreign direct investment.

Out of some 46 new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects recorded in the third quarter of last year, valued at US$241.17million, none was in the area of agriculture and agro-processing, in spite of generous tax incentives offered through the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre.

If he is approved for the post, Dr Afriyie Akotot would have to oversee the realisation of his party’s manifesto vision to, in the next four years, modernize the agriculture sector, improve production efficiency, achieve food security, and profitability for farmers, all aimed at significantly increasing agricultural productivity.

The party says it will achieve this by “increasing subsidies on retail prices of seeds, fertilizers and other agrochemicals, and focus on developing irrigation schemes in the Afram Plains and the Northern Savannah.

The party intends to provide a mechanism to capture the water released by the annual spillage of the Bagre dam in Burkina Faso for irrigation in the north.

“We will also begin immediate discussions with the Government of Burkina Faso for a more controlled spillage of the dam to prevent the flooding that takes place, and facilitate the provision of community owned and managed small-scale irrigation facilities across the country, especially in northern Ghana, through the policy of ‘One Village, One Dam’.”

Still, the NPP intends to “revamp existing mechanization centres and support the private sector to establish, manage, and provide affordable mechanisation services to farmers.”

It cannot be gainsaid, therefore, the incoming Minister of Agriculture has got a herculean task ahead of him, to ensure that all the above promises are implemented in order to revive the agric sector and put it on the path of growth that will create jobs.