Banks should mobilise $10bn for medium and large-scale farming – Kojo Akoto Boateng

Joy FM’s Super Morning Show co-host and commercial farmer, Kojo Akoto Boateng has called for greater investment in large-scale farming, arguing that it is essential to Ghana’s industrialisation. According to him, “For the longest time we’ve been talking about smallholder farmers, smallholder farmers, smallholder farmers, and for me it’s not the route to industrialisation.” Akoto Boateng made the call while discussing the Ecobank and Joy Business Financial Dialogue held on Tuesday, September 22. He said Ghana needed to move beyond its longstanding focus on smallholder farmers.

“If you want to industrialise, you need to expand the farms so that you can improve quality, consistent supply, irrigation, and all that.” Mr Akoto Boateng said large farms could create thousands of jobs while supplying produce for export and manufacturing. He cited Golden Exotics, which he said employed more than 5,000 people and exported bananas worth millions of dollars. He also pointed to Miro Forestry, saying it employed more than 5,000 people across Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

Those employment figures were his claims during the discussion. He criticised what he described as an approach centred on small distributions of seeds and fertiliser to farmers who depend on rainfall. Farming, he argued, needed better planning and stronger links to buyers and manufacturers.

It should be business-led, and it should be able to support manufacturing,” he said. The media personality and commercial farmer urged banks to work with the government and private sector to mobilise substantial funding for medium- and large-scale farms over the next five years. Joy FM presenter and commercial farmer Kojo Akoto Boateng has urged Ghana’s banks to work with the government and private sector to mobilise $10 billion for medium- and large-scale farming over five years.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, during a discussion of the Ecobank Joy Business Financial Dialogue held on Tuesday, he said banks should make a collective commitment to financing agriculture at scale. “We actually need the whole Ghana Association of Bankers to sit down and say, we are the banks. We are going to work with the government and private sector over the next, say, five years to crowd in, say, $10 billion to support farming, medium to large-scale farming, so we can really do what we need to do.” Mr Akoto Boateng argued that larger farms would help Ghana improve the quality and consistency of agricultural produce, expand irrigation and supply manufacturers.

He cited Golden Exotics and Miro Forestry as examples of large agricultural businesses that, he said, employed thousands of people. He also called for a more planned approach to farming, criticising the reliance on small distributions of seeds and fertiliser to farmers working without irrigation. He praised Ecobank for leading the dialogue on agricultural finance, but said sustained cooperation across the banking sector was needed to turn such discussions into investment.