Despite a long decline in agriculture's share of Ghana's economy, the sector remains vital, yet productivity gains are undermined by partial and uneven adoption of modern technologies across seeds, fertiliser, mechanisation, irrigation, and digital services. Closing this gap will require coordinated policy action that addresses financing, infrastructure, and information constraints together, rather than in isolation.
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of posts reflecting on how the evidence from VoxDevLits applies to specific contexts, and is published in collaboration with the International Economic Association’s Women in Leadership in Economics initiative. This post explores how evidence on Agricultural Technology relates to Ghana.
The agricultural share of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been declining over time. From 40–45% in the 1960s to a peak of about 55% in the 1980s, the agricultural sector’s contribution to GDP has fallen steadily to about 20% by 2024, giving way to increasing dominance by the services sector (Ghana Statistical Service 2023, World Bank 2024). Nonetheless, the sector remains a critical pillar of Ghana’s economy, employing about a third of the country’s labour force, and engaging approximately 83% of rural households. A little more than half of the country’s total land area (approximately 126,000km2) is agricultural land. However, farm sizes are generally small, with most individual landholdings less than two hectares (FAO 2023). Additionally, the sector remains largely traditional, relying on rainfed farming systems.
Agricultural productivity in Ghana remains below potential levels (FAO 2023), with most growth resulting from area expansion, rather than yield growth (IFPRI 2011). Given the increasing scarcity of land resources, agricultural growth will increasingly depend on gains in productivity. This can be accomplished through the adoption of crop technologies, the use of improved seeds and recommended levels of fertiliser, as well as the application of adequate farm, nutrient, water, and pest management practices. Evidence suggests that technological adoption could have positive implications for nutrition, dietary diversity, and farm incomes (Koryo-Dabrah et al. 2021).
Incomplete technological adoption practices
The use of modern technologies is often uneven, with many farmers continuing to rely primarily on traditional production. In many cases, there is only partial or constrained adoption of modern technologies due to cost, access, knowledge constraints, and other institutional barriers (Adams and Jumpah 2021, Anang and Asante 2020, Miine et al. 2023). Indeed, this may explain why productivity gains from technology adoption are often smaller than what the potential would suggest. The following subsections examine selected agricultural technologies and explore the extent to which their adoption remains incomplete.
Recycled improved seeds vs fresh certified seeds
Evidence from Ghana suggests a moderate uptake of improved seed technologies, although this can be largely crop-specific (Kuivanen et al. 2019). The distinction between improved and certified seeds is, however, important and may explain why high uptake of improved seeds is often not accompanied by increases in yields. Although several farmers report using improved seed varieties, these are often recycled seeds, and not fresh certified seeds, with the former leading to lower yield gains over time (Nimoh et al. 2022, Ragassa et al. 2013). While cost is the most cited reason for farmers’ preference for recycled seeds, other reasons include non-availability of fresh seeds because of weak distribution systems (Koomson et al. 2024), perceived risky nature of these fresh, untested seeds (Abate et al. 2017), and information gaps about the yield advantages of fresh seeds. An improved seed variety that has been recycled over many planting seasons would not realise full productivity gains. Therefore, the concern is not that adoption of improved seed varieties is necessarily low, but that the quality of the improved seeds being adopted matters.
Fertiliser use is still too low
Farmers in Ghana use a mix of inorganic (most popular), organic, and blended (increasingly promoted) fertilisers, with the exact type depending on factors such as the crop (e.g. maize, rice, cocoa), agro-ecological zone, and access to existing subsidy programmes. In 2006, the Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for an African Green Revolution set the primary target to reach 50 kg/ha. In Ghana, the current level of fertiliser use is 35.75 kg/ha (African Union 2006, Development Gateway 2021). Use of fertiliser in Ghana has become more advanced in recent periods, particularly on maize and other commercial crops (Osei et al. 2020). This is due to government subsidy programmes, commercialisation of maize production, better extension services, and pressures from declining soil fertility that have encouraged agricultural intensification (Jinbaani and Wale 2023, Jayne et al. 2014). However, application intensity is less than the recommended rates, with adverse implications for yields (MoFA 2019, Adzawla et al. 2021). Costs are the primary determinant of the intensity of fertiliser application, so that applications tend to be more strategic than uniform across plots. For example, intensity is higher in northern regions of the country, compared to forest and coastal zones, given lower soil fertility in the former (Chapota and Ragassa 2013); the intensity is also greater for crops such as maize, rice, and cocoa that have higher market value, and lower for other crops such as cassava, yam, and sorghum (IFDC 2020). Fertiliser intensity is also higher with the presence of complementary inputs such as labour and improved seeds (Chapota and Ragassa 2013).
Service delivery systems hold back mechanisation
Mechanisation in Ghana’s agricultural sector is expanding, even among smallholder farmers. Due to the high cost of procuring machinery, rental markets have emerged. Service providers are, however, usually unable to provide these services at the critical times that they are needed due to weak maintenance systems, difficulty in obtaining spare parts, financial constraints, and geographical variations in access. The Ghana government’s earlier policy to support private service providers through Agricultural Mechanization Service Centers (AMSECs) did not yield much success (Benin 2014). Although mechanisation is improving over time, it is often more for ploughing and land preparation, rather than for other activities such as planting, harvesting, and weeding, suggesting that farming systems remain largely labour-intensive.
Adoption without scale: Irrigation and water management constraints
Ghana’s agricultural sector is predominantly rainfed (MoFA 2018), with only 3% of cultivated land under formal irrigation (Delinthe and Zwart 2022). This situation is particularly risky for agricultural production, given the complications of climate change. Like mechanisation, government schemes introduced to increase adoption have shown uneven progress (Namara et al. 2011). Irrigation is driven more by informal farmer initiatives than by formal government schemes, with about 17,000 hectares under formal irrigation schemes, and about 189,000 ha under farmer-led schemes. Farmer-led schemes often comprise the use of small pumps, riverbank irrigation, shallow groundwater use, and small reservoirs (Delinthe and Zwart 2022). Expansion remains limited due to financing, infrastructure, and institutional coordination challenges.
Digital and information technologies: Persistent access constraints
While digital technologies in the agricultural space are expanding over time, it is still in very early stages, with the most popular technologies being mobile-based information services that connect farmers to extension services, weather information, market prices, input information, veterinary services, and peer networks (Miine et al. 2023). However, digital solutions do not automatically resolve rural information gaps. One reason for this is farmers’ reluctance to adopt, taking a ‘wait and see’ approach for proof of reliability and practicality (Atabo 2024). Other factors such as infrastructure, connectivity, literacy, language, trust, and service design all shape uptake of these digital technologies. In Ghana, adoption depends on higher socioeconomic status and belonging to a farmer group with access encouraged by training exposure (Miine et al. 2023).
Successful agricultural technology adoption
The most successful agricultural technological adoptions are often bundled with other services (Danso-Abbeam 2022, Amaning et al. 2019). Where complementary services are weak, adoption tends to be short-lived and/or incomplete.
Innovations in the cocoa sector. The Ghana Cocoa Board’s Productivity Enhancement Programmes, and innovations such as hand/artificial pollination (Wongnaa et al. 2021, Asante et al. 2023), the use of hybrid seedlings (Wongnaa et al. 2022), and mass spraying of pesticides (Abankwah et al. 2010), have all been associated with higher productivity and profits among adopting farmers.
Mechanisation service centres. While the government’s Agricultural Mechanisation Services Enterprise Center (AMSEC) approach had challenges, the major innovation was the adoption pathway through renting/hiring tractors, rather than direct purchases. Combined with the digital innovation ‘trotro tractor’ that connected smallholder farmers with tractor owners for on-demand services such as ploughing, using their mobile phones to book services, studies suggest significant potential (Benin et al. 2012).
Fertiliser subsidy programmes. The programmes have been associated with increases in maize yields (Jinbaani and Wale 2024) and have also been identified as a gateway innovation to more sustainable intensification practices (Jinbaani and Wale 2023). However, fertiliser subsidies have often been argued to be partially successful, with constraints being proper targeting, complementary seeds, and extension support, among others.
Digital extension tools. Digital tools that have shown success are those designed for low-literacy, low-connectivity settings. For example, Esoko, a social enterprise that provides digital services to small-scale farmers in Ghana, provides digital information on weather, market prices, and agronomic information, as well as Farmerline, a similar organisation, which uses a voice messaging system (including in local languages) to deliver market, agronomic, weather, and financial advice. These innovations work best when linked to existing farmer groups, respond to farmers’ specific needs, complement (not replace) extension services, and include training and credit access.
Policy takeaways
The benefits of technology vary and are often dependent on farmers’ access to complementary inputs, the presence of institutional support, the affordability of technology, market integration, as well as prevailing gender and social constraints (Suri et al. 2022). Outgrower schemes are also showing promise as potentially effective technology delivery systems (Konja and Abdulai 2024). Farmers typically contend with multiple constraints to adequate technology adoption, including access to finance, high costs of inputs, price and weather risks, knowledge and information gaps, as well as heterogeneities in soil quality, climate, roads and other infrastructure, markets, among others. This makes them often unwilling or unable to apply technological innovations fully and effectively. Therefore, future priorities should involve coordinated efforts across finance, infrastructure development (especially in rural areas), agricultural research and development to promote context-specific technologies, and policy focus and support in areas of climate-smart agriculture, digital agriculture, youth involvement, as well as agritech startups.
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