Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang on Tuesday told West African governments, investors, and development partners in Accra that food security has moved beyond agricultural policy and now sits at the centre of macroeconomic stability, social protection, and national security.
Speaking at the West Africa Rice Investment Roundtable, organised by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission in partnership with the World Bank and the African Development Bank, Opoku-Agyemang said the region must reduce its dependence on food imports and transform agriculture into a commercially viable industry.
She argued that West Africa holds all the ingredients for a lasting solution: fertile land, abundant water resources, entrepreneurial farmers, growing consumer markets, and one of the youngest populations anywhere in the world. What the region lacks, she said, is the scale of capital needed to convert that potential into commercial production and integrated value chains.
Africa spends more than USD 50 billion annually on food imports, with rice accounting for a significant share of that bill. Opoku-Agyemang said that figure reflects a strategic vulnerability, not just an economic inefficiency, especially as export restrictions, trade tariffs, climate shocks, and geopolitical tensions continue to disrupt global food supply chains.
She pressed the roundtable to treat rice as a strategic economic asset and to back that framing with long-term investment in irrigation, agro-processing, research, and climate-smart production. She also linked the agricultural transformation agenda directly to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), arguing that regional rice value chains could deepen intra-African trade if governments coordinated policy and infrastructure alongside investment.
Organisers noted that deploying 3,500 community solar-powered irrigation systems could increase yields by two to three tonnes per hectare and deliver returns of between 20 and 30 percent, benefiting 50,000 farmers at a cost of USD 43 million.
“The future of African food security must be grown in African soil,” Opoku-Agyemang said.
The ECOWAS Commission President Dr Omar Alieu Touray also addressed the roundtable, pointing to a Regional Rice Roadmap covering 2025 to 2035 adopted by ECOWAS Heads of State. The two-day forum brought together ministers, development finance institutions, private sector leaders, and regional bodies to translate policy commitments into concrete investment pipelines.
