By Dr. Naalamle Amissah
WAHIH – West Africa Horticulture Innovation Hub | Department of Crop Science, University of Ghana
Walk through any market in Ghana – Makola, Kejetia, Kumasi Central, and you will find colour in abundance, tomatoes catching the morning light, aubergines neatly arranged in rows and leafy greens still damp from the farm. Yet despite this abundance, most Ghanaians are not eating nearly enough of it. Ghana’s food security conversation has long been dominated by staples: rice, maize, cassava, yam. These are important, but the WHO’s definition of food security demands more: access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Calories without nutrition has a name, hidden hunger. Hidden hunger is the experience of eating enough to feel full, but not enough to thrive. It is one of the continent’s most persistent health challenges, and in Ghana it is measurable: only around 36–38% of Ghanaians meet the WHO-recommended daily intake of five servings of fruits and vegetables, [5] one of the lowest recorded rates in the world. Ghana’s own Food-Based Dietary Guidelines, launched in 2023, explicitly call for greater dietary diversity. [6] The food environments needed to make that advice actionable have not yet been built. Fruits and vegetables are the answer hiding in plain sight.
What diversity does for the body
Lycopene, the red pigment in tomatoes and watermelon, reduces prostate cancer risk and lowers blood pressure. Beta-carotene in carrots converts to vitamin A, supporting vision and bone health. Green vegetables boost immunity and aid digestion. The anthocyanins in eggplant fight inflammation and improve mineral absorption. These are not imported superfoods. They are foods growing in Ghanaian soil, at prices that are within reach for many households. The problem is not supply. It is awareness, infrastructure, and a national conversation that has not caught up with the evidence.
The constraints are real, and so are the solutions
On the consumption side, affordability is a genuine barrier for the poorest households and any strategy that ignores it will fail those who need it most. Education levels, geographic location, and the proliferation of cheap fast-food compound the problem further. On the supply side, inaccessible roads, no cold-chain transport, poorly sited processing industries, and unregulated markets mean a farmer who grows well can still lose significantly before the first customer arrives.
The research investment gap compounds everything. CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural research network, spent approximately USD 704 million on research in 2023. [1] Yet the World Vegetable Center, the only international non-profit with a global mandate for vegetables, operates on roughly USD 30 million annually, aspiring to double that figure by 2033. [2] A review of US research grants from 2008–2019 found that major commodity crops consistently received 3 to 4.5 times more funding than fruits and vegetables [3], a pattern confirmed at a global scale, including across Ghana, by a 2025 multi-country study. [4] Cereals capture the research dollar. Fruits and vegetables continue to be left behind.
What we know is already growing here
Cleome gynandra (spider plant), Solanum torvum (turkey berry), Colocasia esculenta (taro), and Corchorus olitorius (jute mallow) have fed Ghanaian families for generations, carry strong nutritional profiles, and are adapted to local soils and climates, requiring no imported seed and minimal inputs. Among indigenous fruits, the range is equally remarkable: Chrysophyllum albidum (African star apple), Irvingia gabonensis (bush mango), Synsepalum dulcificum (miracle berry), and Annona muricata (soursop). Many are already eaten at household level but rarely appear in national nutrition programmes, school feeding schemes, or formal markets. This is the low-hanging fruit, in every sense.
The way forward
None of the other steps work without data first. Ghana needs current, disaggregated information on what its population eats, by region, income group, and age, and what those patterns cost in health outcomes. Without this diagnostic baseline, every intervention is operating in the dark.
Built on that foundation, education is the first lever of sustained change. Healthy eating must be woven into school curricula from the earliest years, and local fruits and vegetables incorporated into the school feeding programme. If five servings a day feels too ambitious as an immediate target, starting with one is not a retreat, it is strategy. Changed eating habits are intergenerational: children who learn early carry those choices into the households they will eventually form.
Targeted advocacy directed at high-need groups, nursing mothers, pregnant women, health workers trained to counsel on nutrition, addresses the window in which dietary habits have the greatest long-term effect. A grassroots push for homeowners to plant at least one fruit tree also changes the economics of fresh produce for the households it feeds, reaching the affordability barrier that national programmes alone cannot close.
Biodiversity protection must underpin demand-side action: well-resourced gene banks, reduced on-farm chemical use, and systematic documentation of neglected indigenous species. The knowledge of how to grow, harvest, and prepare these crops lives in people, in older farmers whose children have moved to cities. Once lost, that knowledge is not recoverable. Documenting it now is an urgent prerequisite.
Improved variety development, biological pest control, better disease diagnostics, and smarter irrigation then enable the scale and reliability that make these crops commercially viable, and attractive enough to recruit the next generation of farmers into producing them.
All of this requires political will. Ghana’s 2023 Food-Based Dietary Guidelines already endorse greater fruit and vegetable diversity as a national nutritional priority. Now we need policies to translate that endorsement into budgets, extension mandates, procurement requirements for public institutions, and market regulations, binding enough to hold across election cycles.
The farmer who laid out those tomatoes in Makola this morning did not grow them for a statistic. She grew them because the land produces them, because they sustain families, and because they are good. The science now tells us, in precise and quantifiable terms, exactly how good, and what it costs, in preventable disease and unrealised human potential, to leave so much of what Ghana already grows uneaten, unsupported, and unaccounted for in the policies that shape what ends up on Ghanaian plates. The resolve to change that is what remains.
References
[1] CGIAR (2024). CGIAR Annual Report 2023: Finance. CGIAR System Organization. https://annualreport.cgiar.org/2023/finance
[2] World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) (2025, September 4). Unleashing the power of vegetables: New WorldVeg Global Strategy sets a bold direction for a healthier, wealthier, more resilient future. World Vegetable Center. https://avrdc.org/unleashing-the-power-of-vegetables-new-worldveg-global-strategy-sets-a-bold-direction
[3] Blaustein-Rejto, D., Dobbins, R., Swann, E., Smith, A.R., and Pennock, J. (2022). Closing Research Investment Gaps for a Global Food Transformation. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 5, 794594. [Note: US-based funding data; directional finding corroborated cross-nationally by reference [4].] https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.794594
[4] Responsible Innovations, World Vegetable Center, CGIAR FRESH Initiative, UC Davis, and University of Bonn (2025). The State of Investments in Fruit & Vegetables: Global Report. Responsible Innovations. [Multi-country study including Ghana.] https://responsibleinnovations.org/the-state-of-investments-in-fruit-vegetables/
[5] PMC11504804 (citing GBD Diet Collaborators data) (2024). Prevalence of inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption and associated food choice motives among adults. Fruit and vegetable consumption globally ranged from 36.6% adequate (men, Ghana) to 38.0% adequate (women, Ghana) — among the lowest rates documented worldwide. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11504804/
[6] Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and University of Ghana (2023). Ghana Food-Based Dietary Guidelines. Government of Ghana / FAO. https://mofa.gov.gh/site/images/pdf/Ghana_Food_Based_Dietary_Guidelines_2023.pdf