By: Godsway Kugbey
Ghana produces rice, maize, and other food commodities at a substantial scale, while fish production combines capture fisheries with aquaculture (Ministry of Food and Agriculture [MoFA], 2025). Yet domestic production has not eliminated the country’s reliance on food imports (Ghana Statistical Service [GSS], 2025). This coexistence does not, by itself, indicate that Ghanaian agriculture has failed. Food import dependence refers to the extent to which a country’s available food supply relies on imports to meet domestic requirements (FAO, 2014). As Ghana’s population grows and food demand increases, growth in domestic production does not necessarily translate into lower import dependence. A more useful question is where constraints emerge along the chain from production to consumption, because these constraints differ across commodities. This article examines rice, poultry, fish and maize as 4 distinct forms of import dependence: competitiveness and quality constraints, production cost disadvantages, supply and sustainability constraints, and episodic supply shocks. The differences in these underlying causes call for commodity-specific responses rather than a single effort to produce more or import less.
The analysis uses recent production, food balance, and trade data from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), and other relevant sources. Import dependence is assessed by examining domestic production, available food supply, consumption needs, and imports, while accounting for differences in commodity definitions, processing stages, and reporting periods. Where production and trade figures are not directly comparable, appropriate conversion factors or distinctions are applied rather than treating the quantities as equivalent.
The available evidence indicates that Ghana’s dependence on food imports is substantial but uneven across commodities. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s 2024/2025 food balance records 618,354 MT of milled rice available from domestic production and 166,924 MT of milled rice imports, leaving a net rice deficit of 126,723 MT against estimated needs of 1,393,951 MT. For maize, the food balance records 2,305,778 MT available for human consumption against total needs of 2,941,229 MT, resulting in a net deficit of 267,384 MT (MoFA, 2025). Ghana Statistical Service data also place frozen poultry cuts and offal, semi-milled or wholly milled rice, broken rice, and frozen fish among the top food imports by value in 2024 (GSS, 2025). These figures reinforce the need to examine each commodity separately, as the sources and nature of import dependence differ across the food system.
Rice is the clearest illustration that growing output does not necessarily translate into lower import dependence. Ghana’s paddy rice production increased substantially over the long term, ranging from 302,000 MT to 987,000 MT between 2008 and 2020, although it fluctuated considerably from year to year (MoFA, 2022). Yet paddy rice is not directly comparable with milled rice consumption or imports. MoFA applies a 63% milling recovery rate, meaning that 63% of paddy available for human consumption is converted into milled rice. In the 2024/2025 food balance, 981,514 MT of paddy available for human consumption corresponded to 618,354 MT of milled rice, while total rice needs were estimated at 1,393,951 MT (MoFA, 2025). The persistence of a consumption gap alongside increased production points to constraints beyond paddy output. Peer-reviewed evidence identifies both supply- and demand-side competitiveness constraints, with Ghanaian consumers preferring imported rice, perceiving it as higher quality and showing willingness to pay a premium for it (Ragasa et al., 2020). Research involving 135 rice retailers also shows that quality standardisation and improved value chain arrangements can strengthen the uptake and pricing of quality differentiated local rice (Ibrahim et al., 2022). Increasing paddy production alone is therefore insufficient; processing, quality standardisation and value chain coordination must also improve if domestic rice is to compete more effectively with imports.
If rice shows that growing supply can coexist with persistent import dependence, poultry presents a more pronounced deterioration in relative self-sufficiency. Ghana’s poultry meat self-sufficiency rate fell from 54% in 2000 to 17% in 2018, while per capita poultry meat consumption increased from 1.6 kg in 1999 to 10.9 kg in 2019. The same study reports that maize accounted for 57% to 60% of the feed in the broiler rations examined (Zamani et al., 2022). Recent research also finds that feed accounted for 48% to 59% of total production costs on Ghanaian broiler farms, with high input prices and inefficient feed use contributing to lower competitiveness (Chibanda et al., 2024). Policy simulations indicate that the 2020 partial import ban would increase domestic production by only 5.4% by 2030 relative to the baseline (Zamani et al., 2022). The evidence therefore points to a deeper competitiveness problem: improving production efficiency and reducing input costs are more fundamental than relying on import restrictions alone.
If poultry shows a competitiveness problem rooted in production costs, fish presents a different challenge: domestic supply is constrained by rising demand and limits on sustainable capture. Ghana imported 165,829 MT of fish in 2022, with horse mackerel, mackerel, and sardines among the major imported products (MoFA, 2025). The value of fish and fish product imports was approximately US$216 million (FAO, 2026). Ghana’s Marine Fisheries Management Plan reports declining catch per unit effort and evidence of growth and recruitment overfishing, indicating that marine catches cannot simply expand indefinitely (MoFAD, 2022). Post-harvest losses further reduce the amount of fish reaching consumers, with inadequate ice, poor handling, extended stays at landing sites, and poor processing identified as important causes in Ghanaian fisheries (Abelti & Teka, 2024). Asiedu et al. (2023) project annual growth of only 0.06% for capture fisheries between 2017 and 2030, compared with 6.58% for aquaculture. However, expanding aquaculture also faces cost constraints: feed accounted for 76.84% of total production costs among small-scale cage farms studied in Ghana (Magna et al., 2023). The evidence therefore suggests that aquaculture will become increasingly important for expanding domestic supply, but its growth will depend partly on improving feed efficiency and reducing feed costs, alongside better fisheries management and reduced post-harvest losses.
Maize breaks the pattern established by the other 3 commodities. Unlike rice and poultry, Ghana has generally maintained high maize self-sufficiency, although this position is vulnerable to production shocks. Ghana exceeded maize self-sufficiency by 14% in 2022, but severe dry spells in 2024 reversed that position: provisional estimates put maize production at 3.29 million MT in 2024/25, down 7.96% from 3.58 million MT in 2023/24 (MoFA, 2025). USDA estimated that drought could reduce 2024/25 production to 2.6 million MT and raise imports to 300,000 MT, although these were estimates rather than realized outcomes (Taylor & Beillard, 2024). MoFA’s 2024/2025 food balance estimates 2,305,778 MT of maize available for human consumption against total needs of 2,941,229 MT, resulting in a net deficit of 267,384 MT (MoFA, 2025). Pauw (2022) estimates that Planting for Food and Jobs contributed 42.6% to maize output in 2020 relative to the modelled counterfactual and substituted about 110,000 MT of maize imports. The evaluation also identifies crowding out of commercial input sales and limited marketing support. Maize therefore illustrates a different form of import dependence: the priority is not simply higher production, but storage, market coordination and resilience to production shocks.
Taken together, the 4 cases show that Ghana does not face a single food import problem. Rice remains import-dependent despite increased production because competitiveness, processing, and quality constraints persist beyond the farm. Dependence on poultry has deepened as domestic producers struggle with production costs and input disadvantages. Fish faces a supply constraint compounded by limits on sustainable capture and post-harvest losses. Maize, by contrast, is generally less import-dependent but becomes vulnerable when production shocks expose weaknesses in market and supply systems. These differences mean that a single policy instrument cannot address all 4. Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) illustrates both the value and limits of production focused intervention: Pauw (2022) estimates that PFJ increased maize and rice output by 42.6% and 44.3%, respectively, in 2020 relative to the modelled counterfactual without PFJ. The poultry case reinforces the same lesson: restricting imports from selected suppliers does not necessarily resolve domestic competitiveness when alternative suppliers can fill the gap.
The 4 cases therefore point toward different interventions rather than a single remedy. Production support remains important, but its effectiveness depends on the wider systems that connect production to consumers. Ghana must therefore strengthen the infrastructure, markets, inputs and processing systems that determine whether additional domestic output becomes a reliable food supply. This is particularly important as population growth and changing consumption patterns continue to increase demand. Pauw’s (2022) evaluation indicates that production support can raise output while weaknesses in marketing and commercial input systems limit its wider effects. Future policy should therefore connect production support with the systems needed to improve productivity, competitiveness and resilience rather than treating production increases as an end in themselves.
None of this argues for eliminating food imports outright. Ghana’s objective should instead be to reduce import dependence where it reflects weaknesses that can realistically be addressed. Domestic production must become sufficiently competitive and reliable to respond to growing demand, while imports can continue to complement domestic supply where local production is economically or environmentally constrained. The more defensible objective is therefore not import elimination, but a food system in which domestic production is competitive and reliable where Ghana has the capacity to produce, while imports remain available where they are economically sensible.
References
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