Sam Jonah calls for renewed agricultural investment, recalls Operation Feed Yourself achievements

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Business leader Sir Sam Jonah has criticised successive governments for abandoning the agricultural gains of General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong’s Operation Feed Yourself campaign, arguing that Ghana allowed a successful food production initiative to collapse. Delivering the Second General I.K. Acheampong Memorial Lecture in Accra on Friday, November 13, 2026, Mr Jonah said the programme, launched in 1972, was a nationwide mobilisation effort that brought traditional authorities and communities into the drive for food self-sufficiency. He said the campaign used radio broadcasts and information vans to encourage people across the country to participate in agricultural production. “Cutlasses, hoes, fertiliser and seed were sold at heavily subsidised prices. Feeder roads carried produce to market. Above all, the government invested in water, from Dawenya and Asutsuare to the great Tono dam in the north,” he said.