Transformational Change: Ghana Commodity Exchange

Case study

We applied our Transformational Change methodology to the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) research and policy engagement cluster, drawing on internal documents, official reports, publications and thirteen interviews conducted between May and July 2024.

In Ghana, the agricultural sector contributes around 20% of GDP and employs nearly 40% of the workforce, mostly smallholder farmers (The World Bank, 2024; The World Bank, 2023; Aljudu et al., 2022). However, market inefficiencies and information gaps between farmers and traders have led to suboptimal pricing, mismatched supply and demand, and reduced market participation (Neza et al., 2021).

Agricultural commodity exchanges could address market inefficiencies by providing real-time market information, improving price transparency, and enhancing produce quality.

Since 2014, the IGC has funded a cluster of seven research projects and one event to explore solutions to these market frictions, with an investment of nearly GBP 0.5 million. The key outcome of this work is the research support and policy engagement that contributed to the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX). While recognising that the creation of the GCX was a collective effort driven by several stakeholders from government and academia as well as private and international organisations who were committed to its set-up and were persistent in providing essential support and guidance throughout the process, this exploratory case study focuses on IGC’s contribution to this process.