I am ashamed as a Ghanaian

How did we get here? Burkina Faso which used to be called Upper Volta, when I was in Elementary School, is our neighbour on our northern border. 

Much of that country is almost desert and comparing the level of development in say agriculture, they were nowhere near us at the time of independence. 

In fact on many development indices, we are far ahead of them and it is therefore very shameful to find ourselves in a situation where we are importing tomatoes from Burkina Faso. 

If what I have heard from some media platforms are true, that our government has started to plead with the Burkinabe government to rescind its decision to ban raw tomato exports to Ghana.  What a shame.

 If I were God, l definitely would have regretted creating a people called Ghanaians.  We have all the resources both human and natural, to produce tomatoes beyond measure and for lack of seriousness, we are importing a greater percentage of our tomato requirement.

The sad thing is that we had tomato irrigation projects in the northern part of the country, but like everything else, we lose focus with the passage of time and allow things to deteriorate and then we suddenly wake up to the fact that we have to salvage the situation. 

This is clearly a leadership failure.  The plains bordering the voltage river and lake on either side, can easily be cultivated to feed thus country and why this vast land has not been properly utilised, clearly emphasise the point I just made about leadership failure. 

Once we know that we do not have rains all year round, then the obvious option is irrigation to provide water for farming throughout the year.  That is how you produce more than enough, to feed the nation, add value by processing the excess and become self-sufficient.  

Sometimes, no plausible explanation regarding certain challenges confronting us as a nation can easily be offered. 

If you go through the manifestos of the various political parties in the country, at least since the inception of this fourth Republic, you will find lofty ideas about how to improve our agriculture and how the nation’s growth is going to be anchored on it. 

You will find mention being made of food self-sufficiency, the issue of adequate storage facilities to address post-harvest losses.  What became of the planting for food and jobs program? 

Over politicisation of the agric sector has led to a situation where we move one step forward and two steps backward.

The time to quit the rhetoric and engage in positive actions is now.  We know the problems and the solutions to those problems but focusing on them and getting things resolved, seems to be the challenge.  

The solution is not a rocket science issue.  All we need to do is to copy from say what Nigeria did and tweak it to suit our peculiar environment and implement.  Nigeria has achieved rice sufficiency and we can take useful lessons from them and we can also deal with the tomato production challenge. 

Again, we can also take lessons from Burkina Faso, as to how they were able to transform their agriculture to this stage where tomato is being produced in abundance.  If we are not able to transform our vegetable production, at least to become self-sufficient in tomato production, by the end of this year, as the Americans will say, it will be a crying shame.  

We need to get our act together as a people. Our nation deserves better. God bless.

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