The five-day event was under the auspices of the Competitive Cashew Initiative (ComCashew) in partnership with the African Cashew Alliance (ACA) with support from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG).

“This unique MTP seeks to increase the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of African cashew experts along the value chain and consequently, to further promote the competitiveness of African cashew”.

The participants were from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, three, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Germany, two, Madagascar, Mali, one, Mozambique, two, Nigeria, one, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Vietnam.

Participants would share knowledge, discuss best practices and lessons learnt, and build national and regional networks for future collaboration.

Madam Rita Weidinger, the Executive Director of GIZ/ComCashew briefing the media after the opening commended government for the decision to establish the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) to regulate the cashew and other cash crop sectors of the economy.

On the success stories of the MTPs, Madam Weidinger aptly epitomized that feedbacks from participants of various countries to the ComCashew’s office attested to its far-reaching positive impact on them and their respective countries.

Meanwhile, a Ghana Country Report in April 2019 issued by ComCashew, formerly known as African Cashew initiative (ACi) said the organisation “presents a new and innovative model of broad-based multi-stakeholder partnership in development cooperation”.

ComCashew is a private-public partnership project under the implementation of the Deutsche Gesellshaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, with funding for its third phase from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

In collaboration with private companies and public sector partners, the report said, significant progress and impact had been made for more than 512,000 farmers and about 40 processing companies.

According to the report, since ComCashew’s inception in 2009, around 530,000 new jobs had been created in the six project countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.

The jobs consisted of 75 per cent in production, 20 per cent in trade and five per cent in processing, it said, adding, that had increased those job beneficiaries net income by over US$600 and thereby achieve sustainable reduction in rural poverty.

The report stated the Ghana government had developed sector specific cashew strategies to promote productivity, in-country processing and sector organisation along the value chain.