GAFET’s lead coordinator used the fund’s August 11 Accra launch to frame the new agricultural education endowment within a wider account of government achievements under President John Mahama, going beyond the fund’s own financial targets to defend the administration’s broader record.
Steven Nhyira Odarteifio, a former World Food Programme food systems coordinator who has worked on agricultural financing projects for Ghana’s finance ministry and the Millennium Development Authority, delivered the address at the Palms By Eagle Hotel. He credited the Mahama government with a series of economic gains, including currency stability, lower inflation, restored credit ratings and stronger import cover, though he cited no independent data for these claims in his remarks.
Odarteifio also referenced his own role in the campaign to revert Kotoka International Airport to its original name, Accra International Airport, telling the audience he led a press conference in January calling for the change. The renaming itself is independently confirmed: the transport ministry made it official on February 23, 2026, ending a colonial-era naming dispute tied to the 1966 coup that ousted Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.
Turning to agriculture, Odarteifio credited the minister with tripling government allocations to agricultural colleges and pointed to an initiative he said produced 300 locally built maize and soybean threshers, fabricated by 224 Ghanaian roadside technicians earlier this year. He said the coalition of five agribusinesses backing GAFET were mid-sized firms “whose founders have experienced first-hand the cost of a shortage of practical agricultural skills among our graduates.”
He described GAFET’s launch as the start of a nationwide and international fundraising campaign, with a governing board of government, private-sector and development-partner representatives overseeing how contributions are spent. “This fund does not end today. Today is only its birth,” he said.
Odarteifio placed the launch in a lineage of historic August events in Ghana, citing the 1826 Battle of Katamanso, the 1897 founding of the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society and the 1956 Legislative Assembly vote authorising Ghana’s independence bid.
