OCP on the offensive in Ghana.
On the sidelines of the African Green Revolution Forum, held in Accra from 3 to 6 September, Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Cherifian Phosphate Office (OCP) signed a series of agreements, including on soil mapping and innovation in the agricultural sector.
As the spearhead of the Cherifian kingdom’s South-South cooperation policy, OCP continues to score points in sub-Saharan Africa with the formalization of these new partnerships in Ghana. A partnership that, according to the OCP group’s statement, should « offer stakeholders in the fertilizer value chain a range of high value-added services to provide Ghanaian farmers with adapted fertilizers at competitive prices, but also all the resources necessary for their success ».
The main targets are to train Ghanaian farmers in certain types of crops and in the challenges of optimizing soil management. A formula for cooperation that is far from being disinterested: by being present alongside farmers, the Moroccan phosphate giant can hope to sell its products and services more easily. In fact, Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Ghana’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, recalled that since the beginning of the partnership between his ministry and the OCP Group, the average fertilizer consumption in the country had increased in two years from « 8 kg per hectare to 20 kg per hectare ».
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Stakeholders also confirmed the project to build a fertilizer production plant, announced last September, which should be located in the Jomoro district of western Ghana. Quoted by the Moroccan Press Agency (MAP), Karim Lotfi Senhadji, director of OCP Africa, the group’s subsidiary dedicated to the continent, said that this infrastructure will have an annual production capacity of 1 million tonnes per year and that it will depend on Ghanaian gas and Moroccan phosphate for its supply.