Italy Injects €154 Million Into Ghana’s Agriculture—10,000-Hectare Mega Farm Begins
Eric Opoku, who is the Minister for Food and Agriculture, has made the announcement that the government of Italy, in collaboration with BF International, has made an investment of 154 million euros to expedite the transition of large-scale commercial agriculture in Ghana. On Monday, November 24, the Minister delivered a speech at the Government Accountability Series in Accra, in which he announced that the project would provide assistance for the establishment of an irrigated model farm spanning 10,000 hectares. This farm would be devoted to the production of maize, rice, soya, and tomatoes throughout the year. As he explained, the interventions in question are part of the Feed Ghana Program, which was implemented by the administration of Mahama. This program aims to increase domestic production and exports, create jobs, improve food security, modernize agriculture, and lower the level of dependence on imported goods. Mr. Opoku gave an overview of the developments that had been achieved over the previous nine months, pointing out that ten new minor dams had been constructed and eight others had been renovated. In addition to this, two hundred and fifty boreholes that are powered by solar energy have been constructed for the benefit of agricultural communities and secondary cycle schools in the northern regions, as well as in the Bono and Ahafo areas. In addition, Vea, Weta, Tanoso, Kpong, Ashaiman, and Aveyime are among the major irrigation projects that are now undergoing considerable improvements. In addition, he provided a description of the various development initiatives that are now taking place in a number of interior valleys in the Bono East and Ashanti regions, where rice cultivation is being carried out on more than 1,200 hectares of land in total. In addition, the government of Ghana and the Korea Rural Cooperation are working together to build irrigation infrastructure on a hundred hectares of land in order to assist the production of rice seeds. This project has a goal of generating 10,000 tons of high-quality rice seeds by the year 2027. The Minister emphasized that the food inflation rate had dropped from sixty-one percent in January of 2023 to nine point five percent by October of 2025, and that this drop was evidence of the increasing influence of the strategic interventions that had been implemented by the Feed Ghana Program.
