The Danish government, through a Danish company, FOSS, says it will be providing some support to Ghana for the purposes of food analysis to improve the standard and safety of Ghanaian produce.
This comes after several complaints from the European Union over substandard food produce that are exported from Ghana to the EU.
The European Union is the biggest market for the export of Ghanaian products especially food items.
According to figures from the European Union, Ghana exported goods worth €3.1billion pounds to the European Market in 2018.
However, the Union has since the beginning of 2019 issued more than 50 alerts on some produce from Ghana including pepper, in which it repeatedly warned Ghanaian authorities that the continuous smuggling of some substandard food items into the region would result in the blacklisting of food from Ghana.
The Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Tove Dengnbol, is hopeful the partnership with FOSS and a Nigerian company, Prime Atlantic Global (PAGI) Instruments, will help Ghana solve some of these problems.
“It is a key priority of the government of Ghana to support the further development of the agricultural production and export, and during the recent years, Ghanaian exports of agricultural products, particularly to the EU has increased. Many challenges remain, however, and cooperation in this area is very welcome.”
The Danish Ambassador said the initiative if successful, will attract more investors from Denmark into Ghana’s agriculture sector.
“Working with improving the agricultural sector in Ghana holds a high potential for impact. The agricultural sector is a critical component of the Ghanaian economy, and the largest job-provider of all sectors in Ghana.”
The event, which was held at the residence of the Danish Ambassador to Ghana, saw some players within the agro-business space welcome the new partners to Ghana.
Citibusiness
