Fidelity Bank Urges Ghana to Focus on Agricultural Value Addition over Production Growth

Fidelity  Bank Ghana says the country’s path to  agricultural self-reliance lies in capturing more value from what it already grows, not producing more, citing a stark 2025 trade comparison.

Ghana’s non-traditional agricultural exports generated about $710 million in 2025, while cocoa paste alone generated roughly $789 million over the same period. John-Paul Taabavi, the  bank’s Divisional Director for Corporate and Institutional Banking, presented the comparison on behalf of Managing Director Julian Opuni at the Ghana Horticulture Expo 2026, held under the theme “From Soil to Sovereignty.” “Both were produced from the same soil, the same country, the same growing season,” Taabavi said. “Yet the value of a single product exceeded the value of an entire category of agricultural exports.”

Taabavi argued that agricultural sovereignty does not mean producing everything domestically, but controlling more of the value Ghana creates, keeping more income inside the economy, and getting more Ghanaian businesses a share of that wealth. He said demand is not the constraint: non-traditional exports reached roughly $5 billion in 2025 and now reach 152 countries. The real gap, he said, sits between the farm and the market, in cold storage, aggregation, processing, packaging, logistics, quality standards, certification, reliable energy and access to appropriate finance.

He also pushed back on the assumption that farming is inherently high-risk for lenders. “We often say agriculture is risky. But is agriculture inherently risky, or are we sometimes creating risk through the way we choose to finance it?” he asked, calling for lending structured around production cycles, verified transactions, credible off-take agreements and warehouse receipts, rather than collateral alone.

Fidelity points to its own programmes as evidence the model works. The Fidelity Export Club, launched in 2023 with the Federation of Associations of Ghanaian Exporters (FAGE), now supports more than 400 exporters and farmers. Through the BRIDGE-in-Agriculture programme with the Mastercard Foundation and the bank’s wider SME lending, Fidelity has disbursed more than GHS 160 million to FAGE members, who had generated roughly $40 million in foreign exchange inflows by the end of July 2026.

Alex Amponsah-Agyei, the bank’s Director of SME Banking, said partnerships with the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, the eco.business Fund, the Mastercard Foundation and Development Bank Ghana have let Fidelity lend at a total cost of 7 percent under the BRIDGE-in-Agriculture initiative and accept farmland as loan security, a departure from standard practice. “It cannot be that you have funded the customer, the goods get to the port, and suddenly there is a letter of credit issue,” he said, arguing that lenders need to underwrite the entire export value chain rather than a single transaction.

James Orraca-Tetteh, the bank’s Head of Commercial Banking, pointed to the Fidelity Young Entrepreneurs Fund, which pairs ring-fenced concessionary financing with structured training for young people and women in agribusiness, as another example of the approach. “Where we are going, we have to be more creative than the traditional way,” he said.

The comments came on the second day of the three-day expo, which drew more than 200 exhibitors, over 50 speakers and an expected 5,000 trade visitors. At its opening, FAGE President Davies Narh Korboe said Ghana’s non-traditional export earnings topped $5 billion in 2025 and set a $10 billion target, framing horticulture as a potential driver of that growth if financing gaps, weak cold-chain infrastructure and logistics costs are addressed, a challenge that runs through Fidelity’s own pitch to the sector.

Fidelity has partnered the expo since its first edition. “Sovereignty is not created at the farm gate,” Taabavi said. “It is created when innovation, investment and enterprise transform what comes from our soil into lasting national prosperity.”

Source: newsghana.com