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Dr Isaac Kofi Adjei-Maafo was not looking for a political career when he stumbled upon a sight that disturbed him. He was working around a research centre and travelling through plantation areas when he began noticing something that, to him, simply did not make sense.
Dr Isaac Kofi Adjei-Maafo was not looking for a political career when he stumbled upon a sight that disturbed him.
He was working around a research centre and travelling through plantation areas when he began noticing something that, to him, simply did not make sense.
There were huge stretches of agricultural land but they were sitting abandoned.
“The state farms set up in the 60s… they did so well to put them up but they abandoned them,” he recalled in his conversation with Kafui Dey.
As he drove towards the research station, the scale of what he was seeing began to sink in.
“I got really worried that we have such plantations and we are in the bush,” he said.
Then came the description that perhaps best captures what struck him.
“Vast, very vast,” he said. “I was driving through, you know, acres upon acres, acres upon acres.”
For someone with a lifelong connection to agriculture, leaving such plantations unattended was difficult to understand.
But Dr. Adjei-Maafo did not stop at observing the problem.
He decided to mobilize people from the surrounding communities to begin restoring the plantations.
“So I decided I will mobilize the local people to go and… rehabilitate the plantations,” he said.
The rehabilitation exercise was not simply about clearing overgrown land. It also introduced an incentive system for workers.
Dr. Adjei-Maafo recalled that workers were organized and assigned portions of the plantation. Those who completed their portions first received bonuses.
“And I tell you the bonus system really helped because everybody was competing for the bonus,” he said.
The approach, he explained, helped clear the plantation within a reasonable period.
Looking back, he sees that experience as an important turning point.
“That’s how I got into agriculture and became minister for agriculture,” he told Kafui Dey.
It is a striking account of how a neglected piece of Ghana’s agricultural landscape became part of the story of the man who would later occupy one of the country’s most important agricultural offices.
For Adjei-Maafo, the lesson was clear: Ghana could have the land and the agricultural potential, but leaving productive resources unattended comes at a cost.
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