Ghana produces approximately 2 million metric tonnes of maize every year. It is the country’s most important staple crop — feeding families, fuelling livelihoods, and underpinning the country’s food security. Yet between harvest and market, somewhere between 20% and 40% of that grain simply disappears.
Not stolen. Not sold elsewhere. Destroyed — silently, invisibly, in the warehouses where it was supposed to be safe.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates sub-Saharan Africa loses between 25–40% of its grain to post-harvest causes annually. In Ghana specifically, that translates to:
- 400,000–800,000 metric tonnes of maize lost every season
- GHS 1.4 billion+ in economic value destroyed
- An average warehouse operator losing GHS 17,500 per storage cycle
These are not abstract statistics. They represent farmers who sold their harvest at peak prices, traders who borrowed money to fill a warehouse, and families who cannot afford the inflated prices that follow a bad storage season.
Why It Happens: The Invisible Culprits
When people think of crop losses, they picture floods, locusts, or drought. But in Ghana’s warehouses, the real killers are temperature and humidity — and they are invisible.
Temperature
Grain begins degrading when stored above 30°C. Above that threshold, respiration rates increase, moisture content rises, and the chemical conditions needed for mould growth are established. A warehouse that reaches 35°C for even 72 hours can lose a significant percentage of its stored value — not through dramatic spoilage, but through gradual, undetectable degradation.
Most warehouse operators in Northern Ghana check conditions manually, at best every few days. By the time they notice a problem, the damage has already spread to adjacent pallets.
Humidity and Aflatoxin
Above 65% relative humidity, the conditions are right for Aspergillus flavus — the mould that produces aflatoxin. Aflatoxin is odourless, colourless, and invisible to the naked eye. It cannot be smelled, tasted, or seen until the contamination is severe. By then, the grain is unsellable — and in many cases, genuinely dangerous to consume.
Aflatoxin contamination is one of the leading causes of liver cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. It also causes Ghana’s grain to fail international export standards, blocking access to premium markets.
No Early Warning
The fundamental problem is timing. Warehouse operators discover spoilage at the market — when buyers reject the grain, or when they open a sack and see visible mould. At that point, the entire pallet may already be a total loss.
There is no system in place to catch the problem hours before it becomes irreversible.
What a Solution Looks Like
The technology to fix this already exists. Temperature and humidity sensors cost less than GHS 200. A mobile data connection to transmit readings to the cloud costs less than GHS 30 per month. An automated alert system that sends an SMS when readings cross a threshold requires no specialist hardware.
What has been missing is a system designed specifically for the Ghanaian context — one that works on patchy mobile networks, sends alerts over SMS rather than requiring a smartphone app, and is priced for the West African market rather than European agricultural budgets.
That is what MASQADIA was built to be.
A MASQADIA sensor installed on a grain pallet reads temperature and humidity every 15 minutes. When either reading crosses the configured threshold, the warehouse manager and the grain trader receive an SMS within seconds — not days. The window between “problem detected” and “grain destroyed” goes from days to hours.
The Opportunity
Ghana cannot afford to keep losing 40% of its grain. With population growing and food prices rising, the pressure on the country’s storage infrastructure will only increase over the next decade.
But the solution does not require new roads, new warehouses, or government programmes. It requires a sensor, a SIM card, and an alert system. It requires the kind of practical, affordable technology that meets farmers and traders where they are — not where a European aid project imagines them to be.
Post-harvest loss is not inevitable. It is an engineering problem. And engineering problems have solutions.
MASQADIA is currently running its first pilot deployments with warehouse operators in Northern Ghana. Apply to join the pilot →