OIL GOLD: Adjei-Maafo Recalls How Oil Palm Work Shaped his Journey into Agriculture and Government

For Dr Isaac Kofi Adjei-Maafo, agriculture was not simply a government portfolio he inherited. Long before he became Secretary for Agriculture, the sector had already become part of his life.

His connection with farming went back to childhood. But it was his experience around an oil palm plantation that gave him a different appreciation of what Ghana could produce if its agricultural resources were properly managed.

Speaking to Kafui Dey, Dr Adjei-Maafo recalled his work with oil palm and explained why the crop stood out to him.

“The oil palm is a plant, a very highly resistant plant,” he said.

According to him, the crop is not heavily affected by insect pests, with the exception of the stem borer, which can damage the palms.

But what caught his attention was not only the resilience of the crop. It was what the palm could produce.

The fruits, he explained, could be processed into cooking oil and other products, including inputs for soap and other oils.

“You see, the base of the oil that gives us all the other oils,” he told Kafui Dey.

For Adjei-Maafo, therefore, oil palm was more than another crop growing on Ghanaian soil. It represented an agricultural chain with the potential to support processing and manufacturing beyond the farm.

He also recalled the practical realities of maintaining a plantation.

“Maintenance you have to wait around it and you know the thorns on it and all that. Maintaining it is not easy,” he said.

Yet, the relative resistance of oil palm to pests made it attractive from a production standpoint.

His experience became even more significant when he began interacting regularly with plantation workers. He said he learned a great deal from them, particularly their determination.

That experience would eventually become part of the journey that took him deeper into agriculture and, ultimately, into government.

For a man who had grown up as the child of farmers, the path seemed almost inevitable.

By the time he became Agriculture Secretary under the Pfarming was no longer just the work of his parents or something he had studied. It was a sector he had seen from the ground up and one whose potential he believed Ghana could not afford to ignore.