Cassava is by far the biggest thing Ghana grows, and demand for it is huge, but almost entirely domestic and food-based. On the government’s own plan, a small 2024 deficit turns into a large surplus by 2028. The question is no longer whether the country eats enough cassava. It is who buys the surplus, and at what price. The demand worth chasing is in processed and industrial forms, and in a regional trade the official numbers barely see.
Cassava is nearly half of everything Ghana grows. It was about 45 percent of national crop production by volume in 2019, off just 15 percent of the planted land, so it turns a small share of the country’s farmland into a very large share of its food. Starchy roots and cereals together supply over 75 percent of Ghana’s dietary energy, and cassava is the single largest of them.1
Cassava is the rural staple, grown by about 90 percent of rural households, mostly on plots of two hectares or less, and it is what families fall back on when money or rain runs short.2The urban plate is shifting, though. Rice and wheat bread are the town foods, with about 76 percent of the country’s rice eaten in urban areas, while cassava stays more rural and subsistence-weighted. Demand also keeps rising with a population growing about 2.3 percent a year.3What this means is that cassava’s total demand climbs steadily, but its share of the urban meal is under pressure. The form that travels to the city is gari and cassava-based convenience food rather than the fresh root, so that is where the real urban demand growth sits.
The government’s Feed Ghana Programme sets out demand crop by crop, and for cassava the picture is stark. Food-available production fell just short of consumption in 2024, a deficit of about 1.1 million tonnes at 95 percent self-sufficiency. From 2025 the plan flips to surplus, reaching 105 percent that year and a planned 153 percent by 2028, as production is pushed from 28.5 million tonnes toward a target of 62.7 million.4
These are ambitious targets that may not land in full. But the intent is deliberate policy: grow cassava well beyond what the country eats, to feed agro-industry and export. For an entrant, that surplus is cheap raw material. The risk is the mirror image. If production runs ahead of processing and offtake, farm-gate prices fall and the surplus rots in the field. The demand that decides whether this plan works is industrial and export demand, and it has to be actively built.
These are planned government targets rather than achieved output. The plan is to grow cassava well past what the country eats.
A country that plans to grow far more of a crop than it eats has either built the industry to use it or created a glut. Ghana has not yet built the industry (see Pillar 6). The gap between the planned surplus and the processing to absorb it is the single largest commercial opportunity in cassava, and the single largest risk to the farmer who grows it.
The biggest channel by volume, fresh roots for home and local food, is also the lowest-margin and the most crowded. Value climbs as the root is processed: gari for the urban convenience market, high-quality flour for bakeries, and starch for industry. The Ministry of Trade and Industry targets 200,000 tonnes a year of cassava starch, far above what is processed commercially today, and school feeding already serves gari as about 17 percent of its meals, a channel local processors say is not yet fully open to them.5The clearest signal of where value sits is at the retail shelf: Ghana imports branded Nigerian gari at roughly GH¢500 to 1,200 a bag while local unbranded gari sells at about GH¢200 to 500.6 Ghanaians are paying a premium for branding and consistency that local processors are not yet capturing, and that premium is the opening.
| Demand channel | Who buys | Size or signal | The opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh cassava roots | Households, local markets | Largest by volume, lowest margin, saturated | Little; this is the crowded end of the market |
| Gari | Urban and rural consumers, regional buyers | Broad demand; the premium branded segment is supplied by imports | Brand, grade and pack for the urban convenience buyer |
| High-quality and composite flour | Bakeries, food manufacturers | A policy-backed substitute for imported wheat flour; uptake still low | Reliable flour supply to a named bakery (see Pillar 6) |
| Industrial starch | Food, paperboard, pharmaceutical, textile | MTI target of 200,000 tonnes a year, far above current output | Starch processing built against secured offtake |
| Animal feed | Poultry and livestock feed millers | Emerging; cassava peel and chips as a cheap energy source | Dried chips and peel supplied to feed millers |
| Regional export | Togo, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and beyond | Real but informal and largely uncounted | Formalise, grade and brand the cross-border supply |
Sources: MoFA, Feed Ghana Programme (2025); Ghana Export Promotion Authority; Ghana School Feeding Programme; industry trade press.
Table 4 lists the channels; the sharper question is what each buyer actually pays, and how reliably. Strikingly few cassava prices are on the record at all, and the ones that are trace an inverse line: the highest price sits on the smallest, most contracted volume, and the price falls as the volume rises toward the open household market. Table 5 ranks them.
| Buyer | What they pay, and when | Volume and reliability | What it means for an entrant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accra Brewery, cassava flour | GH¢3.35 a kilogram, 2019 | 260 tonnes a year from a single supplier; contracted, so reliable while it lasts | The highest verified price in the evidence base and the smallest volume in it; a 260-tonne market is a customer, not a market |
| Guinness Ghana, cassava flour | About GH¢3,000 a tonne, 2019 | Imports the balance it cannot source at home | Domestic supply falls well short of the brewer's need, so the gap is a contract waiting to be won (Pillar 6) |
| An industrial starch buyer | About GH¢3,000 a tonne, 2019 | One paper-carton company in Tema; volume stated nowhere | The biggest import gap in the crop and the thinnest evidence behind it |
| The gari floor, buffer stock company | GH¢10 a kilogram, September 2025 | Open-ended in principle; announced, not yet evidenced as clearing | A floor that is also a planning number; test that it is actually paying before you bank it |
| The household pot | No 2026 price on record; last record 2019 | Nearly all of the crop; spot, and the sale is forced within days | The default buyer and the lowest unit price; every other rung is a way of not selling here |
Sources: Ministry of Trade and Industry / WACOMP (2019) for the 2019 prices; Ministry of Food and Agriculture (September 2025) for the gari floor. Prices span several years and exchange-rate regimes and are not directly comparable.
The industrial rungs are where unmet demand concentrates, and it is import-shaped. A gari processor needs roughly 3.6 tonnes of fresh roots for every tonne of gari it makes, so any plant must command a large, reliable catchment rather than a spot market (Figure 6). And the clearest proof that industrial demand exists unmet is ethanol: Ghana buys in tens of millions of litres a year while making almost none from cassava, which is import substitution waiting to happen (Figure 7).
A processor’s root demand is roughly 3.6 times its gari output, so a plant must sit inside a large, reliable root catchment.
On the 2019 value-chain analysis, domestic cassava ethanol ran about 3 million litres against demand near 83 million, and Ghana imported the balance. Later profiles put the shortfall higher still (Pillar 6). The gap is the substitution prize.
Most cassava trade never reaches the official numbers. Ghana’s first national survey of informal cross-border trade valued it at GH¢7.4 billion in the last quarter of 2024 alone, with food products the single largest category at about half of informal imports and 41 percent of informal exports.7A follow-up covering the first three quarters of 2025 put informal trade at GH¢31 billion, running about one and a half times the formal trade with the same three neighbours.8 Cassava and gari are not named in either release, which is itself the finding: the trade is real but too informal and fragmented to be counted.9
The regional market for cassava products is therefore bigger than the official data admits, and it flows both ways. Ghana sends raw and semi-processed cassava to Togo, Burkina Faso and beyond, and imports higher-value branded gari back from Nigeria. There is no cassava price on any exchange and no current public price series, the best structured series stopping in 2023, so no one can see the arbitrage or hedge the risk.10 For an entrant, that invisibility works both ways. It hides opportunity from competitors, but it also means selling blind. The opening is to bring visibility, through aggregation, grading and price information, to a market that has none.
The planned surplus only pays if processing and export grow with it. If production runs ahead, prices fall at the farm gate, and it is the farmer who absorbs the loss.
On the government’s own plan cassava swings from a 95 percent self-sufficient deficit in 2024 to a planned 153 percent surplus by 2028, as production is pushed from 28.5 million tonnes toward a target of 62.7 million. The processing to absorb it does not yet exist.
Anyone sizing a farm or a plant on today's price, and every farmer without a contract when the planned surplus arrives.
Contract offtake before scaling; match planting to a named buyer; track whether the processing build-out (Pillar 6) is keeping pace with production.
The premium urban gari market is being supplied by branded Nigerian imports while local processors sell unbranded and cheap, leaving the best margin on the table.
Ghana imports branded Nigerian gari at roughly GH¢500 to 1,200 a bag while local unbranded gari sells at about GH¢200 to 500. Ghanaians are paying a premium for branding and consistency that local processors are not yet capturing.
Local gari and flour processors selling unbranded and uncertified into the urban market that branded imports are taking.
Brand, grade and pack to a consistent standard; target the urban convenience buyer, not only the local spot market.
Brand, grade and pack the gari. Ghanaians pay a premium for branded imported gari, at roughly GH¢500 to 1,200 a bag against about GH¢200 to 500 for local unbranded, so the premium urban processors are not yet capturing is the opening. Do not start by growing more cassava; the country is planning to have too much. Buy from farmers and process into a graded, branded gari for the urban convenience buyer.
Build the processing the surplus needs. The gap between the planned surplus and the processing to absorb it is the single largest commercial opportunity in cassava, and the single largest risk to the farmer who grows it. A gari plant needs a large, reliable catchment; a starch plant should be built against secured offtake; and ethanol is import substitution waiting to happen, since Ghana buys tens of millions of litres a year while making almost none from cassava.
Bring visibility to a market that has none. There is no cassava price on any exchange and no current public price series, so no one can see the arbitrage or hedge the risk. The invisibility hides opportunity from competitors, but it also means selling blind. Formalise, grade and price the informal cross-border trade, and fund a public cassava and gari price series so farmers and processors trade on a visible number.
Cassava is nearly half of Ghana's crop production by volume, and roots and cereals supply over 75 percent of dietary energy, so demand is huge but overwhelmingly domestic and food-based.
On the government's own plan, cassava swings from a 95 percent self-sufficient deficit in 2024 to a planned 153 percent surplus by 2028. The surplus needs a market that does not yet exist.
Value climbs with processing: fresh roots are saturated and low-margin; gari, flour and starch are where demand growth and margin sit.
Ghanaians pay a premium for branded imported gari, the clearest sign that local processors are leaving urban convenience demand on the table.
Most cassava trade is informal, regional and uncounted, and there is no price signal or exchange, so bringing visibility to the market is itself a business.
Where this connects. Variety and dry matter decide which demand channel a crop can serve (Pillar 1). Turning the planned surplus into value depends on the processing that does not yet exist (Pillar 6). And the price the farmer actually gets, and where the margin leaks, is the value-chain question (Pillar 6).