A youth-led Community-Based Organisation (CBO) in Wa, Lahorima Islamic Youth Association (LIYASS), has made a passionate appeal for support to expand its agribusiness activities to enable it to increase its production to meet the demands and also create more jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.

The group, which is into rural development through its agribusiness, has been in existence for the past two decades and has been working mainly in the Upper West and Bono East regions.

Through the support of the EU-funded Ghana Agriculture Programme, it set up agro-processing factories in Lambussie and Nandom Ko, both in the Upper West Region, and a cassava processing factory in Namasua in the Berekum East Municipality in the Bono East Region, as well as also trained several women.

These factories are currently producing below capacity due to the lack of raw materials to feed them, which is affecting their intended purpose.

Investment

The group is, therefore, seeking support from investors or partnerships that are into similar ventures to support farmers in producing the raw materials to feed the factories.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Chairman of the Association, Abdul-Rahman Najaabu, said the factories have the potential to create hundreds of jobs if operating at full capacity to process cassava into gari and ground nuts into groundnut paste for the local and the international markets.

He said the factories have the capacity to create direct employment for at least 200 women and youth and indirect employment for a lot more others in the value chain of gari and groundnut paste production.

Food security

Despite the capacity of the factories to produce about 15 tonnes of gari and 5,000 litres of groundnut paste daily, he said the factories were unable to meet these targets due to the lack of raw materials.

Mr Najaabu said the group was currently in need of investors or partners to engage farmers to produce to feed the factories and thereby ensure food security in the country.

He said the objective of the group aligned with the 24-hour Economy policy of the current government and believed that with the needed financial muscle, the group could support farmers to engage in year-round farming through the injection of appropriate technology to ensure that the factories operated at maximum capacity.

The chairman of the association, therefore, appealed to the government, other development partners and the business community for support and partnership to revive the factories and create the needed jobs for the people.