Gyekye Tanoh

On the eve of Ghana’s 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifier against Sudan, Ghana Football Association (GFA) president Kurt Okraku joined the Black Stars players at the dining room of their hotel in Accra. He didn’t take a seat. He wasn’t in the mood to. He had come neither to greet nor to eat, but to speak. And what a speech it turned out to be: a 17-minute monologue, a monumental meltdown, filled with fury and frustration.

Every part of Ghana’s food system is corrupt. The water, the land, the food, and the body form a symbiotic relationship. A study conducted by Mensah et al. in 2025 revealed that on a  galamsey mining site, abandoned for six years in Ajamesu, a village in the Ashanti Region, cucumbers were being grown in strongly contaminated soil. Galamsey is the Ghanaian term for illicit artisanal small-scale gold mining.

Every part of Ghana’s food system is corrupt. The water, the land, the food, and the body form a symbiotic relationship. A study conducted by Mensah et al. in 2025 revealed that on a  galamsey mining site, abandoned for six years in Ajamesu, a village in the Ashanti Region, cucumbers were being grown in strongly contaminated soil. Galamsey is the Ghanaian term for illicit artisanal small-scale gold mining.