Kwaku Boateng(1st, L) with other dignitaries from Ghana EXIM Bank
The Ghana EXIM Bank, in collaboration with the Office of the President under the Presidential Initiative on Agriculture and Agribusiness (PIAA), and the Coconut Federation Ghana, has undertaken a field inspection tour across 10 major coconut-growing regions.
The regions inspected include Volta, Eastern, Central, Ashanti, Western, Western North, Bono, Bono East, Ahafo and Greater Accra.
The inspection comes barely two months after the distribution of three million elite, disease-resistant coconut seedlings to farmers under the national coconut revitalisation initiative.
The fully EXIM-financed programme forms a core pillar of the President’s flagship plan to plant 11 million coconut seedlings across 11 regions, with the aim of firmly positioning Ghana as Africa’s leading coconut producer and an emerging global supplier.
The EXIM-funded project is expected to support about 80,000 farmers nationwide, create over 50,000 indirect jobs, and generate between 10,000 and 20,000 direct jobs.
During the tour, the joint inspection team visited more than 600 farms across the 10 regions, where they observed strong seedling performance and proper field management practices.
The Vice President of the Coconut Federation Ghana, Kwaku Boateng, commended the farmers for their commitment to the project.
“The level of care farmers are giving these seedlings is commendable. These visits help us gather real-time feedback and also provide technical support,” he said.
He added that the coconut value chain has the potential to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs, particularly for the youth and women.
“With the President’s leadership and the EXIM Bank’s support, Ghana is steadily becoming a global coconut hub,” he noted.
Farmers, on their part, expressed deep appreciation for the government’s intervention and called for additional seedlings in the next planting season to enable them to expand their farms and contribute more significantly to Ghana’s export drive.
The leadership of John Dramani Mahama, together with the Chief of Staff, the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Ghana EXIM Bank, and the Office of PIAA, continues to drive the country’s coconut transformation agenda, they added.
As Ghana’s official export-development bank, Ghana EXIM Bank has prioritised coconut as a high-value export crop capable of earning substantial foreign exchange, creating sustainable jobs and strengthening rural economies.
Ghana is already leveraging these opportunities, having exported 41,326,637 kilograms of coconuts valued at US$11.44 million in 2021.
The country is now the world’s ninth-largest exporter of desiccated coconut, valued at US$22 million in 2022, while the global coconut export market stood at US$14.19 billion in 2023.
Coconut cultivation is now thriving in 11 of the country’s 16 regions, involving thousands of farmers, processors, exporters, youth groups and rural women entrepreneurs.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah