Nana Kwaku Agyeman, the chief executive officer of Hempire Agric Ltd is optimistic cultivating marijuana on a commercial basis in Ghana can rake in more revenue and cut the country’s dependence on donor funding.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday ( 8 August), Nana Agyeman said Ghana must seriously consider commercialising marijuana due to the dwindling fortunes of primary export commodities such as gold and cocoa.
“It is unfortunate that we continue to go to the people who have legalised industrial hemp in its various forms for loans and grants when we can do the same here. There are so many things that we are not aware of because we only focus on marijuana and not its industrial uses.”
“Do you know that water bodies that have been poisoned can be cleansed by planting cannabis in them? Do you know that it clears carbon emissions?”
Agyeman added, ” The fact is that as a country we are broke. The gold is gone, the cocoa is gone and the bauxite is going … What else do we have? There is nothing else.”
The CEO of Hempire Agric Ltd said the country can derive enormous benefits from commercialising marijuana.
“For the lands that have been mined and thus poisoned … by planting cannabis for about a year, it will absorb all the toxins and make our lands viable again. The opportunity that we can utilise is the production of our own local products [shampoo and creams] by leveraging cannabis … from which taxes can be gleaned,” Agyeman said.
Fred Dzakpata
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