Ato Forson Touts Commercial Agriculture as Answer to Ghana's Youth Unemployment Crisis

Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has placed commercial agriculture at the centre of the government's employment strategy, arguing that a deliberate shift away from subsistence farming toward large-scale, value-chain-driven production offers Ghana its best chance of absorbing a rapidly growing unemployed youth population.

In an interview with Citi FM on Friday, November 13, Dr Forson said government diagnostics had identified agriculture as the sector with the greatest capacity to employ a substantial proportion of the population—but only if it is commercialised rather than left as peasant farming.

"If there is one sector that can create jobs on a large scale, it is agriculture. In fact, the diagnostics we conducted identified agriculture as a sector capable of employing the majority of our people. I mean commercial agriculture. We need to commercialise agriculture, not peasant agriculture," he said.

The urgency of the challenge is difficult to overstate. More than 1.3 million young people aged 15 to 24 are currently unemployed, with youth unemployment in that bracket standing at 32.5 percent . When the definition is extended to age 35, nearly 2 million Ghanaians are neither in education, employment nor training . In Greater Accra alone, youth unemployment reached 49.3 percent in the third quarter of 2025—nearly one in every two young people in the capital region .

Rice, Poultry, Palm Oil, Sugar: The Import Substitution Case

Dr Forson identified rice, poultry, palm oil and sugar as commodities Ghana imports in large quantities, arguing that expanding local production and processing could open considerable employment opportunities across the supply chain—from farming to processing, storage and transportation.

The numbers support his case. Ghana spent over GH¢36.5 billion on food imports in 2025, with semi-milled rice alone valued at GH¢2.39 billion and broken rice at GH¢1.19 billion . Poultry imports run at nearly $400 million annually . Palm oil imports, though partially met by domestic production, still cost close to $200 million a year .

"The chain alone, if you are able to fix it, will create so much jobs," Dr Forson said.

Pwalugu Dam as Anchor Project

As a concrete illustration of the government's approach, Dr Forson pointed to the long-stalled Pwalugu Multipurpose Dam project, which is now slated for completion by December 2030 under a US$1 billion allocation in the 2027 Budget . The dam is designed to irrigate approximately 25,000 hectares of farmland, support a large-scale vegetable production enclave particularly for tomatoes and onions, and generate about 70 megawatts of hydropower for industrial activities in the area .

The project's irrigation scheme would be the largest in the country, with the potential to increase annual rice production by up to 117,000 tons and maize by up to 49,000 tons, reducing imports of those grains by 16 percent and 32 percent respectively . It would also support about 15,000 outgrower farmers, according to the Volta River Authority .

Dr Forson said increasing local production of tomatoes and onions would reduce Ghana's dependence on supplies from Burkina Faso, where traders currently travel to purchase the commodities. That reliance has had damaging consequences for local growers. Tomato farmers in the Bono East Region have complained that uncontrolled imports from Burkina Faso are collapsing local production, pushing farmers into debt and forcing some to consider quitting .

Beyond primary production, Dr Forson said the planned production enclave would create opportunities in food processing and preservation, enabling businesses to add value and expand employment.

The Larger "New Economy" Bet

The Pwalugu allocation forms part of a broader US$3 billion government investment in commercial agriculture under the four-year "New Economy" Programme, announced in the 2027 Budget . The scale of the commitment signals that the government views agriculture not merely as a safety net for rural populations but as a core driver of job creation and foreign exchange savings.

Dr Forson questioned why youth unemployment should remain a major challenge when Ghana has vast arable land, water resources and favourable climatic conditions.

Whether the vision translates into jobs will depend on execution—particularly on whether the Pwalugu Dam, which was originally awarded in 2019 at an estimated cost of US$993 million but stalled after roughly US$12 million was spent on preliminary works without construction taking off, finally delivers . For a generation of young Ghanaians facing a bleak labour market, the stakes could hardly be higher.

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Background Note: Youth unemployment in Ghana is not a general problem with a youth dimension—it is disproportionately concentrated among the young. Seven out of every ten unemployed Ghanaians are under 35, and a November 2025 recruitment drive that drew 21,000 young people to El-Wak Stadium for just 2,000 Ghana Armed Forces slots resulted in six deaths, underscoring the desperation of the job search . The government's commercial agriculture push will be measured against those numbers.