IMANI Flags Ghana-Qatar $1.5bn Agric Deal Arrangement, Says It “Smells” Too Colonial

Public policy think tank IMANI Africa is raising serious concerns over Ghana’s newly announced $1.5 billion agriculture deal with Qatar.

IMANI Africa is warning that the arrangement risks turning Ghana into a breadbasket for the Gulf nation while leaving its own food security fragile.

Under the agreement, Qatar will finance and irrigate farmland, allocate plots to Ghanaian farmers, and guarantee the purchase of the harvest for export. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture projects 2,500 direct jobs, higher productivity, and a stronger export value chain.

On paper, this arrangement may look like a win-win for the two countries. Ghana will benefit from infrastructure, markets, and foreign exchange while Qatar finds a breadbasket in Ghana.

But in the latest IMANI’s criticality analysis on the arrangement, the think tanks question that if most of the produce is earmarked for Qatar, how much food remains on Ghanaian tables?

Ghana, IMANI reiterates, already spends heavily on food imports, particularly rice, poultry, and processed foods. In IMANI’s view, committing prime irrigated farmland to a scheme that prioritizes exports risks deepening this dependency.

The think tank fears Ghana may once again slip into the old pattern of producing raw commodities for foreign consumption while importing staples for its own people just like the colonial pattern.

“The structure raises critical questions. If the bulk of production is contracted for export to Qatar, how much will remain for Ghana’s own food needs? The country is already struggling with high food import bills, particularly rice, poultry, and processed items. The risk is that Ghana becomes a breadbasket for Qatar while still importing basic staples,” IMANI indicated.

It further questioned that, “Are these farms dual-purpose, serving both domestic food security and external demand? And more importantly, can they act as feeders for local agro-processing and manufacturing industries, rice milling, canning, packaging, and food exports beyond raw produce? If the focus is only on producing and shipping raw goods, Ghana risks repeating the old colonial pattern of exporting primary commodities while importing finished products.”

The think tank fears that without clear safeguards, Ghana could lock itself into a model that sidelines domestic food needs in favour of contractual export obligations. This, IMANI sees, is a dangerous trade-off, especially in a global climate where food security is increasingly uncertain.

It is therefore calling on the government to rethink the arrangement. The farms must serve dual purposes of feeding local agro-processing industries such as rice milling, canning, and packaging, while also serving export markets.

In the absence of this, Ghana is at risk of repeating a colonial-era cycle of exporting raw output while importing finished goods at higher costs.

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