Ghanaian Businessman Sees Africa’s Potential as the World’s Major Food Producer and Exporter

With a history of famines and wars that have helped create ecological disasters, it’s hard to imagine Africa becoming the world’s food basket, yet Ghanaian agriculture expert and businessman Thomas Abanga sees this possibility with the right agricultural architecture in place and commitment from national leaders.

“We’ve got to wake up because in the next 15 to 20 years, the entire world will be looking to Africa for two things. Number one is food. Why? We have 70% of the land that is not cultivated. Number two, human capital. If you look at the average age in Africa, it’s in the thirties. So we need to start to put the architecture in place where we can revamp our institutions that will prepare us to increase production, and we would need the right system.”

Thomas Abanga is the president and CEO of A & G Agro Mechanical Industries and Abanga Farms for more than 20 years. In this episode, he discusses how his company has been exploring and implementing innovative solutions throughout Africa to address the continent’s agricultural production in economically and environmentally sustainable ways. His company A &G Agro Mechanical Industries represents one of the largest tractor manufacturers in West Africa and in 140 countries.