Ghana’s agriculture sector plays a crucial role in reducing poverty and achieving economic growth. Agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 60 % of the population. A central objective of the country’s medium-term development policy framework – the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda 2010-2013 – is for Ghana to become a middle-income country by 2015. Key to this is the modernisation of agriculture by a dynamic and competitive private sector, which should lead to accelerated growth.

The agricultural sector currently falls far short of its potential to secure incomes, employment and the food supply, and thus to reduce poverty among the rural population. Low productivity is the greatest challenge to the development in the sector. The reasons for this are numerous. Producers have little access to financial resources and modern technologies and their organisational structures are weak. Unresolved land usage rights prevent people from making long-term investments. A lack of technology and infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, makes it difficult to process primary agricultural products, and also causes high post-harvest losses. Finally, smallholder farmers are seldom able to offer their produce to local markets, let alone the more demanding international markets.

The sector strategy being pursued by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is intended to encourage growth in the agriculture sector through political and institutional reforms as well as a comprehensive investment programme.

GIZ is implementing a programme to promote market-oriented agriculture. Effective advice and access to other services should help farmers to improve their production methods and thus increase their yields and incomes. By promoting value chains in this way, the intensification and diversification of agricultural production is linked to measures to improve product processing and marketing. The approach is also intended to strengthen the institutional and organisational development of public and private sector support bodies. The agricultural policy advice is especially targeted at the formulation and enactment of trade-relevant quality standards.

Cooperation with the private sector plays a major role. Ghana's agri-business sector can help small farmers gain access to regional and international markets. For this reason, special support is given to partnerships between agri-business enterprises and small farmers that encourage contract farming or out grower schemes. KfW Entwicklungsbank is promoting the expansion of rubber cultivation through contract farming. The bank maintains a fund to support such relationships within the value chain, which is helping smallholder farmers to partake in development.

Two regional projects being co-financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are supporting the cultivation of cashews and cocoa:

• The African Cashew Initiative is raising the competitiveness of cashew production in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d‘Ivoire, Ghana and Mozambique. Its activities include training measures for cashew farmers to improve their cultivation methods and projects to develop and promote the local processing industries, as well as the farmers' organisation and their integration in the international markets.
• In the Cocoa Livelihoods Programme, GIZ is implementing a component to promote sustainable cocoa growing. This provides training for 170,000 cocoa producers, including 46,000 from Ghana, in entrepreneurship. It also supports private companies in developing new business services. The aim is to diversify income sources and secure the farmers' long term competitiveness in the global market.

In addition to this, two development partnerships with the private sector also exist in the cocoa. These are the iMPACT project (Mars Partnership for African Cocoa Communities of Tomorrow), which is improving incomes and promoting health among the cocoa farmers, and the Certification Capacity Enhancement programme, which is supporting sustainable cocoa production through the introduction of environmental and social standards.