The Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) cleared more commodity trades in the first three months of 2026 than it did in the whole of last year, but its chief executive is warning that without a mandatory trading policy, farmers will continue to be exploited and the exchange will struggle to reach its full potential.
GCX Chief Executive Officer Evelyn Abakah, speaking in an exclusive interview in Accra, disclosed that the exchange recorded 2,130 metric tonnes of commodity trades between January and March 2026, surpassing the 1,700 metric tonnes traded across all of 2025. Abakah, who took office on 8 August 2025, said the volume milestone reflects growing confidence in the platform but stressed that the gains remain fragile without a firmer policy framework.
Her central concern is that government agencies, particularly the National Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), are purchasing grain from farmers outside the exchange’s price discovery system, warehousing services and mandatory grading processes. She called on government to channel all NAFCO operations through the GCX platform to guarantee fair pricing, quality grading and protection against aflatoxin contamination.
“I expected there would have been a policy that mandates certain commodities be traded on the platform. But as it stands, there’s nothing like that,” she said.
Abakah described the human cost of this policy gap in stark terms, recounting a conversation with a farmer during a visit to Tamale. The farmer told her: “We determine the food that comes to this country, but we’re the poorest people.” She said the encounter underscored how deeply the structural failure to route trade through the exchange is hurting those it was designed to protect.
She explained that grain middlewomen routinely pressure smallholder farmers to heap produce and sell at deflated prices, while the GCX model, based on standardised 50-kilogram bags and transparent pricing, would allow the same farmers to earn significantly more.
On the operational front, the GCX has launched a USSD mobile service accessible via a three-digit code, enabling farmers in remote areas to check commodity prices and locate buyers before travelling to market. The exchange has also partnered with World Vision to train 99 farmer groups across northern Ghana on post-harvest handling, addressing losses caused by farmers holding produce in anticipation of prices that sometimes never materialise.
Abakah flagged regulatory and logistics misalignment as a barrier to export growth, noting that she identified demand for maize during a visit to Zimbabwe but found Ghana currently lacks the shipping coordination and regulatory alignment to fulfil such orders. She disclosed plans to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enable rice trade between Ghana and Nigeria.
Looking further ahead, the GCX is exploring expansion into tree crops such as cashew and mango through a pending MoU with the Tree Crops Development Authority, as well as possible entry into metals, oil and eventually perishable goods including tomatoes and pepper, subject to improvements in cold storage capacity.
