Ghana has excess food for export, says NAFCO CEO

Ghana News Agency (Bawku) – Hanan Abdul-Wahab Aludiba, chief executive officer of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), says the country has both enough food for domestic use and excess for export, due to the introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) policy.

He said the country no longer imports food. Rather, it exports its excess food to neighbouring countries.

“We said we were going to do Planting for Food and Jobs and of course we have been able to do that, and there is an increase in production. There is no importation of food: rather, we are exporting food to our neighbouring countries.

“Recently, people from Kano, in Nigeria, came to buy rice from the Fumbisi Valley. People from Burkina Faso and Togo have come to buy our food, simply because we have in excess,” he said.

Aludiba said this when he joined members and sympathisers of the New Patriotic Party in Bawku Central in the Upper East Region on a health walk.

Speaking to the media shortly after the event, Aludiba said the many social intervention policies and projects, such as Free Senior High School, Planting for Food and Jobs, NABCO, the improved National Health Insurance Scheme, One Village, One Dam (1V1D) and One District, One Warehouse (1D1W) executed by the government, are an indication that Ghanaians will give the NPP another chance to govern the country.

Winning Bawku Central

“I can assure the good people of Bawku that we are taking the parliamentary seat,” he told participants in the health walk. “We are taking the seat because we have performed better, and we have repeated this fact that is known to the good people of Bawku.”

Bawku Central is currently occupied by Mahama Ayariga of the National Democratic Congress, who is seeking re-election. It was previously famously held by Hawa Yakubu, the NPP firebrand who died in 2007.

Gabiana Abugri Agbanwa, general manager of the Produce Buying Company (PBC) Shea Ltd, who lost the 2016 election narrowly to Ayariga, is back again to contest the 2020 elections on the NPP ticket.

Zongos at heart

Abibata Shanni Mahama, the deputy chief executive officer of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), said roughly 80% of MASLOC funds had been channelled to support Ghanaian women, most of them Muslims. This shows that the NPP has the zongo community at heart, she said.

Among other people who joined the health walk were regional and constituency NPP executive members, government appointees and sympathisers of the party.

The chief executive of NAFCO earlier donated 75 brand new motorbikes to the Upper East regional chairman of the NPP, Anthony Namoo, for onwards distribution to all 15 constituencies in the region.

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