On a stretch of the Afram Plains that was largely unproductive farmland five years ago, a 21,000-acre agricultural project is quietly becoming one of the most significant private investments in Ghana’s food system, drawing the attention of the presidency, development finance institutions, and researchers focused on the country’s long-term food security.
Nobi Agriculture, founded and led by Ghanaian entrepreneur Kwame Awuah-Darko, is being built in deliberate phases across the Afram Plains, with 7,000 acres currently under active development in its first stage. President John Dramani Mahama visited the Sikasu farm on Saturday, March 21, 2026, alongside Agriculture Minister Eric Opoku, during a trip to the Afram Plains that also included the groundbreaking for Ghana’s first Farmer Services Centre at Takoratwene, which Mahama described as a decisive step toward modernising the country’s agricultural sector.
The presidential delegation toured Nobi’s crop research institute, irrigation infrastructure, rice fields, warehouses, silos, and processing facilities, receiving a comprehensive view of how the project integrates cultivation, research, and value addition within a single ecosystem.
The farm’s water management backbone is a 23-acre reservoir with a storage capacity of 1.2 million cubic metres, engineered to stabilise growing cycles in a region where rainfall variability has historically limited traditional farming. That infrastructure supports current rice yields averaging 3.5 tonnes per acre, a figure that reflects the combined effect of improved seed selection, precision irrigation, and modern cultivation methods.
Post-harvest capacity has received equal investment. The processing complex includes a rice mill operating at three tonnes per hour, paired with a dryer, a climate-controlled warehouse, and silo storage holding 1,300 metric tonnes of paddy rice. Together these facilities allow Nobi to move into value addition rather than selling unprocessed grain at the farm gate, a step that significantly changes the economics of the operation.
Development Bank Ghana (DBG) provided long-term patient capital to Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), enabling CBG to support Nobi with financing that traditional bank timelines would not allow. DBG has invested over GHS 400 million in agriculture since it started, with plans to reach GHS 1 billion in the sector over the next few years, and Nobi represents one of the more significant individual commitments within that portfolio.
A rice research institute operating within the farm compound focuses on developing indigenous seed varieties suited to Ghana’s soil conditions and climate, building local scientific capacity rather than relying on imported genetic material. Awuah-Darko’s position is that Ghana’s agricultural transformation will depend as much on science and infrastructure as on land and labour, and the research institute reflects that conviction in practical terms.
The project currently employs more than 150 Ghanaian youth in direct roles, creating a trained agricultural workforce in a region where formal employment opportunities have historically been limited. As the development scales toward its full 21,000-acre footprint, that number is expected to grow substantially.
Ghana imports more than $1 billion in rice annually. The Afram Plains has the land and water. What has been missing is the infrastructure and capital to make production work at scale. Nobi Agriculture is attempting to close that gap, one season at a time.
