“If Ghana’s much-invoked 24-Hour Economy is to be more than a rhetorical flourish, it must be anchored in industries whose biological, industrial, and logistical properties allow for continuous production, value addition, and export. Cannabis cultivation, not Cocoa, meets these criteria. Its exclusion from Ghana’s formal economy is therefore not merely conservative—it is a policy contradiction”
There are moments in a nation’s economic life when sentiment must yield to arithmetic—when inherited moral reflexes must submit to evidence, and policy slogans must confront structural reality. Ghana has declared its ambition to build a 24-Hour Economy: an economy that works in shifts, absorbs idle labour, deepens value chains, earns foreign exchange beyond daylight hours, and extracts more value from land, logistics, energy, and time itself. Yet even as this vision is proclaimed, the state continues—almost ritualistically—to destroy one of the few crops already operating in the shadows of a 24-hour system, employing thousands, sustaining rural economies, and generating illicit value that rivals formal exports.
Each year, under the watchful gaze of law enforcement, media cameras, and public moral theatre, seized cannabis is ceremonially incinerated. The act is meant to affirm state authority and moral resolve. But what rises in smoke is not merely a prohibited plant. It is a quantifiable, renewable, scientifically validated economic asset—one capable of regenerating degraded land, absorbing surplus youth labour, feeding pharmaceutical and industrial value chains, stabilizing foreign exchange inflows, and diversifying an economy strained by debt, ecological exhaustion, and commodity over-dependence.
This is not a cultural plea, nor an indulgence in libertarian romance. It is a 24-Hour Economy argument in its most practical form. Cannabis—cultivated, tracked, processed, exported, and regulated—fits precisely into the logic of continuous production, agro-industrial processing, logistics, security, research, and export operations that do not sleep. The question before Ghana, therefore, is not whether cannabis aligns with our inherited moral instincts, but whether our laws—and our destruction of value—align with the economic future we claim to be building.
The Land We Have Lost, and the Economy It Can Become.
According to consolidated assessments from the Minerals Commission, the Forestry Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency, between 150,000 and 300,000 hectares of land in Ghana have been severely degraded by illegal small-scale mining—galamsey—over the past decade. These lands, concentrated in the Western, Ashanti, Eastern, and Bono regions, bear the scars of mercury contamination, compacted soils, disrupted hydrology, and stripped topsoil. In agronomic terms, much of this land is functionally dead for cocoa, a crop that requires deep organic matter, stable moisture regimes, and long recovery cycles.
Here, biology becomes policy-relevant.
Cannabis sativa is not merely tolerant of marginal soils; it is phytoremediative. Peer-reviewed agronomic studies demonstrate its capacity to stabilize degraded land, stimulate microbial activity, and tolerate certain heavy-metal stresses more effectively than perennial tree crops. Where cocoa fails, cannabis can establish, mature within months, and begin the slow work of soil rehabilitation. What Ghana currently treats as an environmental liability can be converted into a regenerative economic asset.
Walter Rodney reminded us that development is not about what an economy produces, but how and for whom it produces. An economy that leaves vast tracts of land idle—or worse, poisoned—while criminalizing crops capable of restoring them is not cautious. It is incoherent.
Cocoa’s Diminishing Returns.
Cocoa built modern Ghana. But reverence is not a development strategy.
Over the past decade, cocoa export revenues have stagnated and, in recent years, declined in real terms. The causes are well documented: swollen shoot disease, ageing tree stock, climate variability, land competition from mining and urbanization, and escalating input costs. Cocoa trees require five to seven years to reach meaningful productivity, and yields decline after two to three decades. Rehabilitation is slow and capital-intensive. Meanwhile, global prices—currently under US$2.27 per pound—remain volatile and structurally constrained by buyer concentration.
This is not an argument to abandon cocoa. It is an argument to stop pretending cocoa alone can carry Ghana’s future.
The contrast with cannabis is not ideological; it is mathematical.
Price and Yield Comparison (Indicative).
| INDICATOR | COCOA | CANNABIS |
| Average global wholesale price | US$2.27–3.18 per lb | US$950– US$1,000 per lb |
| Typical yield per hectare (dry) | 400–600 kg/year | 1,200–2,000 kg/year |
| Time to first harvest | 5–7 years | 3–4 months |
| Harvest cycles per year | 1 | 2–3 |
Even under conservative assumptions, the value per hectare of cannabis exceeds cocoa by orders of magnitude. This is not speculative exuberance; it is observable pricing in regulated markets.
Resource Efficiency, Resilience and Ecological Logic.
| FACTOR | COCOA | CANNABIS |
| Water intensity | Moderate–High | Moderate |
| Climate resilience | Vulnerable to heat & disease | High adaptability |
| Suitability for degraded land | Low | High |
| Soil restoration effect | Neutral | Positive |
Development economists rarely encounter a crop that earns foreign exchange while repairing ecological damage. Cannabis does both.
Global Evidence: What Legalization Produces.
Across jurisdictions that have amended their laws, the outcomes are instructive.
- Canada has generated over C$76.5 billion in GDP contribution and nearly C$30 billion in tax revenue since legalization, with a tightly regulated market and manageable public-health outcomes.
- The United States, despite federal fragmentation, now records nearly US$50 billion annually in legal cannabis revenue across states.
- Morocco, once synonymous with illicit cultivation, is transitioning into a regulated medicinal exporter to the EU.
- Germany, unable to grow at scale, is a major importer, illustrating sustained global demand.
Notably, reported problematic use rates in these countries remain well below levels associated with alcohol, underscoring that regulation manages risk more effectively than prohibition.
Burned Evidence: The Opportunity Ghana Has Already Destroyed.
Between 2015 and 2025, Ghanaian law-enforcement and narcotics authorities have destroyed cannabis on a scale that, when translated into economic terms, reveals a staggering act of self-inflicted loss. Public reporting—episodic but verifiable, documents the eradication of large cannabis farmlands and the incineration of seized stock across the Volta, Eastern, Greater Accra, and other regions. While Ghana does not publish comprehensive annual destruction statistics disaggregated by acreage or biomass, conservative consolidation of documented events tells a clear story.
Over this ten-year period, approximately 266,000 kilograms (266 metric tons) of cannabis have been destroyed through farm eradication and post-seizure incineration. Valued at current conservative wholesale benchmarks— approximately US$2,176 per kilogram—this represents at least US$578 million in lost potential export value. When downstream value addition, taxation, employment multipliers, and foreign-exchange effects are considered, the true economic cost exceeds US$1.1 billion.
The figures are sobering:
- Farmland eradication alone, including large-scale destruction in 2014–15 and the documented 80-acre (32- hectare) farm destroyed in the Volta Region in February 2022, accounts for an estimated 153,000 kilograms of cannabis, equivalent to US$333 million in today’s wholesale terms.
- Major stock destruction between 2022 and 2025, including the public incineration of 50 metric tons at Bundase in 2023 and court-ordered destruction in Ho and Tema, accounts for an additional 111,050 kilograms, worth roughly US$240 million.
- Smaller but recurrent seizures—bags, sacks, and consignments routinely burned, add several million dollars more.
These figures rely on conservative agronomic conversion assumptions, approximately 1,500 kilograms per hectare, well below yields achieved in regulated jurisdictions, and reflect export-level wholesale value, not inflated street prices. If anything, they understate the true scale of opportunity foregone. What Ghana has burned is not contraband alone. It has burned export revenue, jobs, reclaimed land, and policy credibility.
A Natural Advantage Ghana Refuses to Exploit.
Most high-income markets that consume cannabis cannot grow it year-round. Winter climates, high land costs, and strict zoning make them dependent on imports. Ghana, by contrast, enjoys twelve months of sunlight, multiple rainfall windows, and vast fallow or degraded land unsuitable for food crops.
This creates a counter-seasonal export advantage, akin to how tropical states dominate winter fruit markets. In regulated supply chains, reliability matters as much as price. Ghana can offer both.
Cannabis and the Architecture of a 24-Hour Economy.
A 24-Hour Economy is not sustained by slogans; it is sustained by systems. Cannabis enables:
- Shift-based cultivation and processing;
- Continuous value addition (pharmaceuticals, textiles, industrial hemp);
- Round-the-clock logistics and export certification;
- Formal employment for youth otherwise absorbed into galamsey and cybercrime;
- Predictable foreign-exchange inflows independent of seasonal cycles.
Cocoa, by contrast, is seasonal, disease-prone, slow to mature, and price-distorted.
To speak of a 24-Hour Economy while criminalizing one of the few crops structurally compatible with it is to confuse aspiration with arithmetic.
The Revenue Horizon.
Consider a restrained scenario: 50,000 hectares, a fraction of degraded land under regulated cultivation, yielding 1,500 kg per hectare, with only half exported at conservative prices.
Even after compliance costs, this supports multi-billion-dollar annual export earnings, exceeding recent cocoa revenues. Over five years, such inflows would materially alter Ghana’s debt trajectory, currency stability, and public investment capacity.
This is not optimism. It is compound arithmetic.
Law as the Binding Constraint.
Why, then, does Ghana hesitate?
Under the Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019), cannabis remains primarily criminalized, with narrow discretionary exemptions. The framework is permission-based, not industry-based. It provides no scalable licensing regime, no agricultural integration, and no investor certainty.
As a result:
- Banks will not lend;
- Insurers will not cover;
- Export buyers will not contract.
The law controls risk, but it also suffocates value.
What Reform Should Do.
Reform need not be radical; it must be precise.
- Reclassify medical and industrial cannabis as an agricultural-industrial commodity.
- Separate cultivation regulation from narcotics enforcement.
- Zone production on reclaimed galamsey lands.
- Require mining firms, already legally obligated to reclaim land, to finance cultivation. 5. Enforce strict THC thresholds, digital tracking, and export-only channels.
This is not permissiveness. It is governance.
Funding the Policy: Aligning Mining Obligations with National Reclamation and Regenerative Agriculture.
Crucially, Ghana does not approach this terrain empty-handed. The obligation to restore land ravaged by mining is not a moral appeal; it is settled law. Under the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703), mining rights are conditional, not absolute. Section 18 of the Act binds every holder of a mining lease to conduct operations in a manner that safeguards the environment, while Section 110 expressly requires the reclamation and rehabilitation of disturbed land before the surrender or termination of a lease. This duty applies equally to large-scale operators and licensed artisanal and small-scale miners operating under the same statutory framework.
That obligation is reinforced by Ghana’s environmental regime. The Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1994 (Act 490) and its subsidiary Environmental Assessment Regulations, 1999 (L.I. 1652) require mining firms to submit approved reclamation plans and post reclamation bonds or financial guarantees as a precondition for environmental permits. These bonds are not symbolic. They are legally callable instruments, designed to ensure that land restoration is financed even where an operator defaults or exits prematurely. In law, therefore, the cost of environmental repair is already prepaid by the polluter.
What has been missing is not authority, but imagination. Ghana has treated reclamation as an end-of-life compliance ritual rather than a gateway to renewed productivity. Yet the law itself permits a more ambitious interpretation. The Minerals Development Fund Act, 2016 (Act 912)—which channels a portion of mineral royalties into mining-affected communities—already mandates the use of extractive wealth to repair extractive harm. Redirecting a defined share of these funds toward rehabilitating mined lands for regulated, export-oriented cannabis cultivation would not require legislative revolution, only policy coherence.
In effect, the legal scaffolding for funding a regenerative cannabis economy already exists. Mining companies are compelled by Act 703 to restore land. Environmental bonds mandated under Act 490 and L.I. 1652 provide the financing mechanism. The Minerals Development Fund supplies a community-anchored institutional vehicle. What remains is for the state to align these instruments with a forward-looking agricultural and industrial policy—one that converts scarred land into productive acreage, compliance costs into development capital, and environmental liability into economic renewal.
When law, ecology, and economics are finally allowed to speak the same language, Ghana’s path becomes unmistakably clear.
The Choice Made Visible.
Every ton of cocoa earns thousands. Every ton of regulated cannabis could earn millions. When a nation confronting youth unemployment, land devastation, and fiscal stress chooses to burn the latter while clinging exclusively to the former, it is not exercising prudence—it is misallocating sovereignty.
Policy is choice, made visible.
Ghana does not lack land, sunlight, or science. It lacks a legal architecture aligned with reality. History will not judge us by our attachment to inherited crops, but by whether we recognized, early enough, that development is not about what we have always grown, but about what the future demands we cultivate.
The smoke rising from burned cannabis is not virtue.
It is opportunity, dissipating.
And opportunity, once lost, does not regenerate as easily as land—unless we choose to let it.
Sedem Ofori
The author is a Pan-African public intellectual exploring the nexus of political economy, law, Human Rights and development, offering data-driven, practical solutions for national prosperity.
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