For many Ghanaians, the relationship between agriculture and the national economy begins with cocoa. That is understandable.
Cocoa has shaped communities, created livelihoods, earned foreign exchange, financed national development and become part of how Ghana understands itself economically.

Even today, its importance is difficult to overstate. Ghana Statistical Service data show that cocoa beans and cocoa paste alone accounted for 46.7 per cent of the country’s food product exports in 2024. Add cocoa butter, powder and other products and the footprint becomes even larger.

But perhaps that is precisely why we should be asking a different question. What else can we build? Not what can replace cocoa. That would be the wrong question. Rather, what would it take for Ghana to deliberately build another serious agricultural value
chain alongside it? I have found myself thinking about this increasingly through coffee. I should make an important admission at the outset. I am not an agronomist. I am not a coffee scientist.

I do not pretend to have spent decades studying plant varieties, soil conditions or farm yields. My interest comes from somewhere else. Much of my professional life has been spent around journalism, communication, business, institutions and public engagement.

I am fascinated by how sectors grow, how ideas attract investment, how industries develop ecosystems around themselves and, importantly, how some economic opportunities become part of the national imagination while others remain largely invisible. Coffee, for me, raises all of those questions. Ghana already grows coffee This sometimes comes as a surprise.

Coffee is not new to Ghana. COCOBOD traces its introduction to the country to early missionaries and identifies Robusta as the variety that thrives here, with cultivation historically concentrated across parts of Ashanti, Bono and Ahafo, Eastern, Central,
Western and Volta areas. Production is largely associated with smallholders. Over the years, there have been deliberate attempts to develop the sector.

COCOBOD records an Agricultural Diversification Project in the 1990s that supported coffee through improved pricing, iberalised markets, research and extension. A later Coffee Development Project beginning in 2010 sought to expand cultivation and provided
farmers with planting materials, inputs and other support. So the question is not whether Ghana can grow coffee. We already do.
The more interesting question is why coffee has not yet developed the economic depth, visibility, commercial ecosystem and institutional architecture that would make it a much more consequential part of Ghana’s agricultural story.

And perhaps that question tells us something useful about diversification itself.

Diversification is not simply planting something else Governments frequently speak about diversifying agriculture.

Ghana’s 2026 Budget does so explicitly. It identifies modernised agriculture, higher value addition, productive jobs and export growth as central economic objectives, and points to diversification across tree crops, including mango, oil palm, shea and cashew. That direction makes sense.

But diversification cannot simply mean identifying another crop and encouraging more farmers to plant it. A crop is not yet an industry. An industry requires systems.
It needs reliable planting material and extension services.
It needs research.
It needs farmers who can produce consistently and profitably.
It needs buyers.
It needs finance.
It needs predictable markets.
It needs processors.
It needs quality standards.
It needs packaging.
It needs logistics.
It needs brands.
It needs retailers.
It needs consumers.
It needs exporters who understand international markets. And it needs enough coordination between all these actors for everyone to believe that the system will still work tomorrow.

That last part matters.

In July this year, coffee farmers at Barniekrom in the Ashanti Region publicly called for a more structured market for their produce. Among the issues they raised were the absence of guaranteed prices, uncertainty around reliable buyers and the lack of a regulatory framework comparable to what exists for cocoa. We should be careful about assuming that every feature of the cocoa system should simply be replicated for coffee.

Coffee has different markets, different economics and different opportunities. But the farmers’ concerns point to something fundamental. People invest when they can see a market. People expand production when they believe somebody will buy what they grow. Young people enter industries when those industries appear capable of producing viable livelihoods. That is why building a value chain requires much more than increasing acreage.

There is a large global market, but that does not guarantee Ghana a place in it Globally, coffee is serious business.

The Food and Agriculture Organization says world coffee production exceeded 11 million tonnes in 2024. Approximately eight million tonnes were traded internationally, with world trade valued at more than US$34 billion. The sector supports the livelihoods of up to 25 million farmers and their families, while smallholder farms account for as much as 80 per cent of coffee farms worldwide. Those figures are impressive.

They are also not an argument, by themselves, for Ghana to rush into coffee. Big global markets do not automatically create profitable local industries. Countries still have to compete on productivity, quality, cost, consistency, logistics, market access, reputation and increasingly, traceability and sustainability. And there is another uncomfortable reality.

FAO notes that much of the coffee produced in developing countries is still exported at an early stage of the value chain. That means a significant amount of value is created somewhere else after the bean leaves the producing country. That should interest Ghana. Because perhaps our opportunity is not simply to ask how much more coffee we can grow. Perhaps we should also ask how much more value we can build around the coffee we grow.

The opportunity may be much bigger than farming Think about what happens after coffee leaves the farm.

Someone processes it.
Someone grades it.
Someone transports it.
Someone roasts it.
Someone packages it.
Someone designs the packaging.
Someone finances the business.
Someone distributes it.
Someone sells it.
Someone brews it.
Someone serves it in a hotel, café, restaurant or office.

Someone builds technology around payments, traceability, inventory or customer engagement. Someone tells the story.
Someone creates a brand people are willing to pay more for. That is a much larger economic conversation than farming alone. And this is where I think coffee becomes particularly interesting.

It sits at the intersection of agriculture and modern consumer culture. It can exist simultaneously on a farm, in a factory, on a supermarket shelf, inside a hotel, at a business meeting, on a university campus and in a café filled with young people working on laptops. Very few agricultural products travel so visibly across all those spaces. That creates potential entry points for industries that may not instinctively think of themselves as participants in agriculture.

Banks.
Fintech companies.
Packaging businesses.
Insurance companies.
Hotels.
Restaurants.
Retailers.
Logistics providers.
Technology companies.
Media businesses.
Tourism operators.
Universities.
Investors.
None of them needs to become a coffee farmer to participate in a coffee economy.

We should also be honest about the risks

Coffee is not an economic magic trick. Its global market can be volatile. Smallholder farmers in producing countries do not always
capture a fair share of the final value. Climate change is also creating significant risks for coffee production globally, affecting rainfall, temperature, pests and the suitability of growing areas. FAO has warned that transforming the coffee value chain requires attention not only to productivity and markets, but also to farmer livelihoods, climate resilience and inclusive investment.

Those realities should make us more serious about coffee, not less. Because if Ghana chooses to grow the sector, the ambition should not simply be to produce more beans. It should be to build something resilient enough for farmers to benefit, commercially
attractive enough for businesses to invest, sophisticated enough to compete and flexible enough to respond to changing markets.

Perhaps the bigger lesson is about how Ghana builds industries.

This is ultimately why coffee interests me. It is a useful test of a much bigger question. Can we become better at deliberately building complete economic ecosystems around things Ghana already produces? We have spent decades talking about value addition. We know the vocabulary.

Processing.

Industrialisation.
Exports.
Jobs.
Local content.
SMEs.
Market access.
But every value chain forces us to confront the practical meaning of those words.
Who finances the businesses?
Who guarantees quality?
Who develops the market?
Who connects producers to buyers?
Who invests in research?
Who develops consumer demand?
Who builds strong Ghanaian brands?
Who tells the story?

And perhaps most importantly, who brings all of these people into the same room?

As we prepare for the third edition of Ghana Coffee Week this December (1-6), those are the questions I find myself increasingly interested in. The Ghana Coffee Summit, which opens the Week, should therefore not simply be another event at which people tell us coffee has potential. We already know potential is not enough. The more useful conversation is about what has to happen next.

Government has a role.Farmers have a role.
Researchers have a role.
Businesses have a role.
Financial institutions have a role.
Hospitality has a role.
Media has a role.
Consumers have a role.
And those roles will not always be the same.
Ghana does not need coffee to become another cocoa.

Nor should we measure every agricultural opportunity against cocoa’s history. What we need is the discipline to identify viable opportunities and then build the institutions, markets, businesses and culture required to make them work. Coffee may or may not become one of Ghana’s major agricultural success stories. That outcome should be determined by evidence, economics, markets and our ability to execute. But it is already a useful place to begin asking the right question:

If Ghana genuinely wants to diversify its economy, are we prepared to do the hard work of building whole value chains, rather than simply producing more commodities? That is a conversation worth having. And perhaps, over a cup of Ghanaian coffee, it is one we should have much more often.

The writer is a Ghanaian journalist, strategic communications and public diplomacy practitioner, entrepreneur, and Chief Steward of Ghana Coffee Week, with experience spanning media, business, international engagement and public affairs.
www.ghanacoffeeweek.com | hello@ghanacoffeeweek.com