Cambridge scholar, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto is urging NPP delegates to elect him as flagbearer of the party. The former Minister for Food and Agriculture says he resigned his office to vie for the presidency of Ghana so he could advance the interests of Ghanaians and make the NPP more attractive to them.
He promises to make agriculture the centerpiece of a national revival that ensures households have enough food at all times in the ambit of increased production and exports. He is going to tackle the land tenure system which prevents access to make land available for purpose.
The NPP flagbearer aspirant figures his plan to make the agricultural sector run at full capacity through investments. Funds will be used to procure farm inputs, for the greater uptake of scientific research, a reinvention of state farms primarily to provide jobs for the youth, and agriculture to break household poverty.
Expatiating on job creation to TheGhanaReport, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto said, a clear distinction has to be drawn between land for agriculture and land for social development so that the former is not encroached. In this regard, his administration will tap into the configuration of the experts such as the CSIR-Soil Research Institute in fencing out arable lands so they are not converted to other uses.
It is the easy access to land either for private or commercial agricultural purposes, paid farm work under a possible state farm system, a ready market for agricultural produce or its storage and processing, and agricultural dividends as humanitarian provisions for the needy that will make a greater difference in the lives of all Ghanaians, on the platform of shared values irrespective of political affiliations, the former minister said.
Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto says he might have surprised the field with his impressive showing in the NPP Super Delegates contest, yet more is to come in the extensive voting where he draws support from rural farmers who witnessed progress in their activities under his watch as sector minister.
He said once he gets additional mileage to his quest to get into the Jubilee House, the seat of Ghana’s presidency, it will be the ”season” for smallholder farmers, the unemployed youth, a corporate world that is to make synergies with the core business, and for the donor community to observe value for money in terms of the impact funds are going to make on households.
He will grow the poultry sub-sector by urging scientific researchers to work on alternative feeds. Expensive soya and maize-based feeds that are often imported could have substitutes in the formulation with insect larvae. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR-Ghana has made inroads in that respect.
Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto will work closely with countries such as Brazil and Argentina to improve animal husbandry not only in terms of increasing their stocks but also by creating factories that produce related products as sources of employment, import substitutes, and exports.
Other pillars of his presidency will be social safety and security, improved conditions of service for public sector workers, greater transparency in recruitment processes in state institutions, support for the private sector, a household policy in which at least the most prioritized member is supported, conscious, strategic assistance to sports and arts industry, and an energized party base fueled by educational avenues and skills training to members.
Dr. Afriyie-Akoto spearheaded the establishment of the Tree Crop Development Authority. It is predicated on the possibility of Ghana accruing on an annual basis, 12 to 14 billion dollars in export revenues from six cash crops namely, Coconut, Cashew, Sheanuts, Coffee, Cotton, and mango. According to him, over-reliance on the 2 billion dollar annual cocoa revenue is not enough.
Ghana had a food basket that proved resilient to the ravages of COVID-19 in the year 2020, the back-stopper being the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs Policy. These are some of the highs of his tenure as agricultural minister between 2017 and 2023, a period Ghana consistently recorded growths in agriculture.
He has argued that the driver of food inflation in Ghana in the past two years is not a product of food scarcity, but exogenous factors that attended the agricultural sector.
Akoto beba-that is the slogan.