Smallholder farmers often struggle to access high-quality inputs, financing to support their planting seasons, post-harvest storage, and transportation to markets. Middle-class farmers working on medium-sized farms face similar challenges. Investment in agriculture is deemed risky and consequently unattractive to financial institutions, and so even with larger farms, producers struggle to access credit facilities that would […]

Savannah Fruits Company Brings Sustainability and Transparency to the Shea Supply Chain Headquartered in Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana, Savannah Fruits Company is an artisanal shea butter and plant-based oils and soap company. The company was established in 2006 on the foundational belief that businesses can operate successfully, and profitably, with minimal environmental […]

By David Lederer, Project Manager, Red River Foods Yao Wilfried Kouadio, 26, lives in a small community in the Sakassou region of Côte d’Ivoire called Konankro, located in the country’s dense, lush, central region where cashew trees dot the landscape. While sun-loving cashew trees grow quickly here, without appropriate spacing they fail to produce their […]

By Akinyi Ochieng, Lead, Marketing and Communications, Partnership for Natural Ingredients Over the last two decades, the global trade in raw cashew nuts has more than doubled to 2.1 billion kilograms. While African countries have driven this boom, cashew farmers like Kate Gyabaah have rarely seen an increase in their incomes despite the growing international […]