The final session of the three-week long training aimed at helping bridge the knowledge and beef up the cashew sector in West Africa was held at Hill View Guest Centre in Accra.

Participants were trained on cashew processing, production and how to select, improve planting materials, obtaining, managing and cashew nurseries, and value addition.

The special session saw participants from Ghana – 11, La Cote d’Ivoire – 9, and one each from Burkina Faso and Nigeria who were sponsored by the Ghana Private Sector Competitiveness Programme (GPSCP), the USDA PRO-Cashew Project and GIZ/MOVE.

MTP implemented by the African Cashew Alliance (ACA) in partnership with the GIZ/MOVE project, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Cocoa Research Institute (CRIG), the Conseil du Cotton et de l'Anacarde (CCA) and the Consultative International Cashew Council (CICC) has over the years trained 1,344 young people along the cashew value chain from 11 countries in Africa since the inception of the programme.

It was co-funded by the European Union, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

Significance

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the MTP, the Managing Director of Africa Cashew Alliance (ACA), Ernest Mintah acknowledged the challenges faced by the cashew sector as the motivating factor for the programme.

“What we have seen in Africa is that there has been a big knowledge gap. If you take the issue of processing, we are having very high processing costs in Africa. Some were in the region of about US$550 per ton processed compared to about $250-$300 in Vietnam and India.

The challenge is not limited to technology, but also the capacity of the human resource,” he said. Comparatively, he said Africa’s yield was averaging 450 kg per hectare compared to that of Cambodia which generates 2,000 kg due to their capacity, knowledge, and skills producers were introduced to.

Mr Mintah indicated that with the MTP and “improving on the human resource, we will be able to not only also export about 95 per cent of the cashew we harvest in Ghana, but also transform them and create jobs and create more incomes for the government”.

Value Addition

Team Lead of GPSCP II, Ebenezer Ato Simpson said although the country had been producing enough cashew, processing had been a great challenge to raking in the needed foreign exchange.

“The difficulty is mainly with the value addition. They don't have sufficient volumes of cashew to add value to; because most of what is harvested are just shipped out to India, Vietnam, and other countries.

The cost of processing is high due to high energy costs, access to finance, expand, many challenges,” he said.

He added the cashew sector has recently gained attraction in the international community with some partners such as SECO and the Swiss government helping to “enhance the environment within which the enterprises operate, by trying to harmonise and align policies that makes operation thrive; and by also offering grants to the private sector to access technology, to make processing easier, accessing finance, accessing new markets and be more competitive”.

He urged beneficiaries of the MTP programme to carry themselves as change agents and ensure the lessons learnt through the programme were extended to other colleagues in their working space to help the cashew sector thrive across Africa.