President John Dramani Mahama used the commissioning of Ghana’s first pasta processing plant to announce that pasta would soon join a growing list of food products banned from commercial land transit, while also revealing a significant agricultural breakthrough that could eventually supply the plant with locally grown wheat.
Speaking at the inauguration of Olam Agri’s Kpone facility on March 5, 2026, President Mahama said he would direct the Finance Minister to add pasta to Ghana’s land transit restriction list, following similar recent moves on vegetable cooking oil, rice, tomato puree, and mackerel. “Now that we have our own pasta factory here, we must make sure that cheap, imported, smuggled pasta is not brought in through our eastern border,” he said.
The eastern border reference points to long-standing concerns about goods entering Ghana from Togo, which is the largest pasta importer in Africa. Industry sources say significant volumes of imported pasta have historically entered Ghana informally through this corridor, undercutting local manufacturers.
The more surprising announcement from the ceremony concerned wheat. President Mahama disclosed that scientists from the Crops Research Institute under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have developed a wheat variety capable of growing successfully in Ghana, a crop long considered unsuitable for the country’s tropical climate. Initial field trials produced yields of between five and six tonnes per hectare, which Mahama described as encouraging enough to explore integrating the variety into Olam Agri’s supply chain. He said he had already raised the prospect directly with Olam’s leadership at the commissioning ceremony.
If realised, local wheat sourcing would materially reduce the pasta plant’s dependence on imported grain, strengthening the import substitution case that underpinned the investment in the first place.
Mahama also confirmed at the ceremony that the government would allow duty-free importation of factory equipment for companies willing to expand or establish new manufacturing facilities in Ghana, framing the concession as a direct incentive for the kind of industrial investment Olam represents.
Olam Agri has operated in Ghana for more than three decades, expanding from commodity trading into agro-processing across cocoa, cashew, grains, wheat milling, biscuits, and tomato processing. The company currently employs more than 4,500 Ghanaians directly and indirectly. The newly commissioned pasta plant adds 60,000 metric tonnes of annual production capacity and is expected to meet approximately 40% of Ghana’s domestic pasta demand, reducing a $140 million import bill accumulated between 2021 and 2024.
