When President John Dramani Mahama launched the Nkoko nkitinkiti programme in Kumasi in November 2025, Ghanaians were presented with the promise of a new dawn for the country’s struggling poultry industry.
The message was powerful: empower citizens with chicks, increase domestic poultry production, create employment opportunities and reduce Ghana’s excessive dependence on imported frozen chicken.
For a country where millions of dollars leave the economy annually to import poultry products, the promise naturally attracted public attention. Every Ghanaian who believes in economic independence welcomed the idea of strengthening local poultry production.
However, eight months later, the question that must be asked is whether Ghana received a carefully designed poultry transformation programme or another political intervention hurriedly introduced to fulfil a campaign promise.
The reality is that Ghana’s poultry challenge has never been about the absence of chicks. Ghana’s challenge has always been about building a complete poultry ecosystem. A serious poultry industry requires affordable feed, veterinary support, disease control, technical knowledge, processing facilities, storage systems, financing and guaranteed markets. The Mahama administration appears to have focused on the easiest and most politically visible aspect, which is distributing chicks, while neglecting the difficult structures required to make those chicks productive.
Genuine concerns have emerged about whether beneficiaries have the capacity and support required to raise the birds to maturity. Public discussions have also raised questions about reports that some beneficiaries have resorted to consuming the chicks instead of developing them for commercial production. Whether these cases are isolated or widespread, they reveal a fundamental weakness in the programme’s architecture. The truth is President Mahama and the NDC created a chicks distribution system without creating a strong accountability system.
The ordinary Ghanaian who receives chicks cannot be blamed for the failure of a programme that was poorly structured. A government intervention must be designed around the realities of the people it seeks to support. If beneficiaries lack feed, technical assistance and monitoring, then government cannot expect chick production to emerge from individuals and households operating under difficult economic conditions.
This is why the Mahama administration’s approach requires serious questioning. The government committed GH¢245 million to the livestock programme in the 2026 Budget, yet Ghanaians are still asking basic questions about the sustainability and impact of the intervention.
How many birds have survived? How many commercial farmers have been created? How many jobs have been generated? How much has Ghana reduced poultry imports?
These questions matter because public money invested in the Nkoko nkitinkitii must produce dividends or results.
A more strategic government would have approached poultry development differently. I am of the view that the government should have championed legislation establishing a dedicated poultry development institution to coordinate, supervise and monitor the programme. Ghana cannot build a globally competitive poultry industry without structural interventions and professional oversight.
Beyond institutional reform, government should have invested in establishing large-scale Broiler Estate Farms across the sixteen regions. Instead of distributing chicks across thousands of homes and expecting individual beneficiaries to overcome enormous production challenges alone, the government could have created regional poultry hubs managed professionally and equipped with modern facilities.
These broiler estate farms would have created employment for thousands of young people, improved production standards, reduced bird mortality and created a complete value chain from production to processing, packaging, storage and marketing.
The Broiler Estate Farms could also have supplied locally produced chicken to schools, hospitals, security agencies and other public institutions, ensuring that government itself creates a reliable market for Ghanaian poultry consumers.
Additionally, government should have supported private poultry companies by drastically reducing taxes on feed, equipment and essential production inputs. The private sector has the expertise to expand the industry if government creates the right environment.
Nkoko nkitinkiti was supposed to represent Ghana’s poultry breakthrough. But without proper restructuring, it risks becoming another failed government policy.
In conclusion, Ghana does not need a poultry programme that makes headlines at launch but struggles when the cameras leave. Ghana needs a poultry strategy built on institutions, industrial-scale production, private-sector collaboration and long-term vision.
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