Olam Agri Launches Ghana's First Local Pasta Brand, Cutting Import Reliance

For years, every strand of spaghetti cooked in an Accra kitchen traveled from somewhere else: Turkey, Italy, China, South Africa. Ghana spent an estimated $140 million on imported pasta between 2021 and 2024, making it the second-largest pasta importer in Africa, behind only Togo. That figure now hangs over a far more interesting question: can a locally made brand hold its own on the plate?

Olam Agri Ghana's Country Head Baibhav Biswas posed that question with a direct answer at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra on March 27, when he and fellow executives unveiled First Choice Premium Spaghetti to a room of trade partners, distributors, and food industry stakeholders. The brand is manufactured at Olam's $40 million pasta facility in Kpone, Greater Accra Region, commissioned on March 5 by President John Dramani Mahama.

At 60,000 tonnes of annual production capacity, the Kpone plant is built to supply approximately 40 percent of Ghana's total pasta needs. Built in just over a year and finished ahead of its 18-month target date, it sits adjacent to Olam's existing wheat milling operation in Tema, already the country's largest. The supply chain logic is tight: flour milled onsite feeds the pasta lines next door, cutting the costs that previously accumulated somewhere between a Turkish port and a Tema container yard.

Those costs matter most at the point where spaghetti meets a pot of water. Accra chop bar operators, home cooks making one-pot pasta dishes, and market traders who stock weekly grocery bundles are all working from the same metric: value per plate. If First Choice can deliver cooked texture that holds through a braise, a surface that grips tomato-based sauces, and a shelf price that undercuts the imported brands Ghanaians already know, it has a compelling case. The product is already in major retail and trade outlets nationwide through Olam Agri's distribution network, with consumer-facing campaigns rolling out immediately. Ghanaian media personality Naa Ashorkor signed on as brand ambassador for the rollout, a choice that signals the company is aiming well beyond B2B distribution and directly at household recognition.

Biswas was precise at the March 5 commissioning: "From today, every packet of pasta consumed in Ghana can be produced locally, by Ghanaian talent, on Ghanaian soil. This strengthens domestic manufacturing, builds technical expertise, and ensures that the value generated by local consumer demand remains within the national economy." Group CEO Sunny Verghese placed the $40 million investment in a longer frame: "Olam was born in Africa over three decades ago, and Ghana was the second country where we established operations. Our confidence in the nation has grown year after year."

The Kpone facility currently focuses on the premium spaghetti format, with plans to expand into macaroni and other short-cut shapes in subsequent phases. The fortified pasta formulation adds a nutritional angle beyond price. With roughly 300 direct jobs and nearly 1,000 indirect roles tied to the facility, and a four-year import bill of $140 million behind it, First Choice Premium Spaghetti is not a niche product launch. It is a structural bet on Ghana's food economy.

The brand will not be judged in press releases. It will be judged the first time a trader in Makola Market reaches for a packet and finds it cheaper than the Turkish import sitting next to it.