Getting started
It is a practical guide to eleven of Ghana's crops and animal protein commodities, each one read as a business rather than a farming manual. For every commodity you get the opportunity, what it costs to start, the market signal, and where the real money sits along the value chain. It is built for students, entrepreneurs and investors deciding where to put their time and capital.
Start on the homepage with the Start herecard near the top. It asks a couple of quick questions about your capital and interest and points you to a commodity that fits. From there, open that commodity's page and read the brief at the top before going deeper.
No. Every commodity stands on its own, and inside a commodity you can jump straight to the section you care about, for example Cost and returns or Demand and market. The numbered sections simply offer a sensible path if you would rather read straight through.
Yes, it is free, and no account or sign-in is needed. You can read everything and download the documents that have been attached without logging in.
Finding your way around the homepage
Scroll to The eleven commodities. The cards move through an auto-playing showcase, and the controls above them drive what you see. Use the filters to narrow the list, or switch to Compare to see them all in one table. Click any commodity to open its full playbook.
Sector shows only crops or only animal protein. Start capital keeps commodities you could begin at a given budget. Sort by reorders them by capital, time to first revenue or market size; click the same sort again to flip the direction.
Grid shows each commodity as a rich card, one at a time in the showcase. Compare lays all of them side by side in a table so you can scan start capital, time to first revenue and market size at a glance. The same filters and sorting apply to both.
On a commodity page, drag the capital slider to set how much you would put in. The calculator models a base case and shows the scale you could run, projected annual revenue, estimated net profit and the payback period, with a bar splitting costs from profit. It is an illustration to size the opportunity; the full workbook is in Downloads.
It is a quick grid of the headline numbers for a commodity. On phones and tablets it shows the first few and a View more button reveals the rest, so the page stays short on small screens. On a wide screen every number is shown at once.
That band walks through the eight stages of the value chain, from inputs to the consumer. Its point is that most of Ghana's lost value sits in a couple of middle stages, post-harvest handling and processing, and that is often where the best returns hide rather than in simply producing more.
Inside a commodity page
From the top down: a photo hero with the commodity name, a short brief answering “is this a business for you?”, the earnings calculator, an at-a-glance numbers strip, the value-chain band, the section by section pillars, two reference banners, and the Downloads block.
Each pillar is one part of the business, for example Varieties, Demand and market, Disease and risk, Cost and returns and Strategic outlook. The card carries a topic image and an Open this section link that takes you into the full write-up with its charts and tables.
Nowhere, on purpose. Clicking either one opens a small pop-up with a short explanation, one about where value leaks along the chain and one about who the playbook is for, then closes again. They never navigate you away from the commodity you are reading.
Reading a section
Scroll to the foot of any section. Two buttons there take you to the previous and next section, each labelled with its name, so you can read straight through without going back to the commodity page.
Use All sections at the foot of a section, or the small back link near the top, to return to the commodity. The Ghana Agribusiness Playbook logo in the top bar always takes you to the homepage.
Sections use charts and sortable tables to show the numbers behind the write-up; in a sortable table you can click a column heading to reorder it. The small line underneath credits where the figure came from: Source for a single reference, Sources when there is more than one.
The bar at the top
It is the header, and it stays with you as you scroll so navigation is always one click away. It starts clear over the hero photo and turns solid once you scroll down. On the homepage it links to the main areas; inside a playbook it shows a back link. The logo always returns you home.
Downloads
In the Take a playbook with you block, choose a commodity, then pick a document: the full playbook, the cost model, an investor snapshot or the risk cards. Click its button and the file downloads to your device. On a commodity page a round Download full PDF button also follows you as you scroll.
Documents are attached over time. If a file is not ready yet, the card shows Coming soon, and if you click a button before its file is attached, a small Upcoming note appears instead of a broken link. Once the file is attached the button downloads it normally, with nothing else to do.
It is the format and length of the attached file, so you know what you are getting before you click. The page count is read from the real document. A card showing only a format with no length, or marked Coming soon, has no file attached yet.
What the words mean
- Value chain
- The full journey a product makes from farm to buyer: inputs, production, post-harvest handling, processing, storage, marketing, retail and the consumer. Each stage is a business in its own right.
- Post-harvest
- Everything that happens after the crop leaves the field or the animal leaves the farm: drying, cleaning, grading, storage and transport. In Ghana this is where most value is lost, so it is where much of the opportunity sits.
- Aggregation
- Gathering produce from many small farms into larger, sellable volumes. An aggregator buys, sorts and resells at scale.
- Capital to start
- A realistic amount of money needed to begin at a sensible size. Shown on each commodity as a 'start from' figure; the calculator lets you model larger scales.
- Time to first revenue
- Roughly how long from starting until money first comes in, for example one season for a crop or a few weeks for broiler poultry.
- Market signal / market size
- How strong and how large the demand is, rated from Niche up to Very large. It tells you how much room the market has for a new entrant.
- Margin
- The share of revenue left as profit after costs. A 30% margin means 30 pesewas of every cedi of sales is profit.
- Net profit
- What you keep in a year after all costs are paid. The headline figure in the calculator.
- Payback period
- How long it takes for profit to earn back your starting capital, shown in months.
- Biosecurity
- The practices that keep disease out of a farm: fencing, clean water, quarantine and hygiene. Central to poultry and fish.
- Off-taker
- A buyer who commits to purchasing your output ahead of time, such as a processor or a large trader. A reliable off-taker lowers your risk.
- Yield
- How much you produce per unit of land or per animal, for example tonnes of rice per hectare.
- Pillar
- One of the numbered sections inside a commodity playbook, such as Demand and market or Cost and returns. Together the pillars cover the whole business.
- Source vs Sources
- The small line under a chart or table. 'Source' means the figure rests on one reference; 'Sources' means two or more.
Tips and accessibility
Yes. Once you have scrolled down, a small back to top button appears in the corner. One click returns you to the top of the page.
Yes. Every page adapts to phones and tablets, tables scroll sideways when they are wide, and long sections use a View more button so you are never buried in numbers on a small screen.
The site respects your device's reduced-motion setting. Turn it on in your phone or computer accessibility settings and the animations and auto-playing showcase settle down automatically.
It is a project of the Ashesi University Center for Entrepreneurship, in Berekuso, Ghana. Use the Contact link in the footer to reach the team.