Since its peak during the Israel-Benin cooperation era in the 1970s, Benin’s citrus value chain has faced a series of setbacks. The end of Israeli support in 1973 left the industry in turmoil, characterized by inferior planting materials, suboptimal farming practices, significant post-harvest losses, and a lack of cooperative marketing efforts. The government of Benin […]
Wild dura palm is a native species and is widespread throughout the West Africa sub-region, including Liberia. Red palm oil, made only from dura palm, is the staple vegetable oil within Liberian cuisine, but despite the trees being abundant, around 35 percent of its palm fruit is left unharvested every year due to limited infrastructure […]
Located in the central Atlantic Ocean directly west of Senegal, picturesque Cabo Verde is home to a burgeoning aquaculture industry. An integral part of the local economy, fishing provides a livelihood for thousands of people. Among the many, one family-owned business stands out, seeking to harness and expand the archipelago’s fishing industry. Family-owned Fresk D’Gustinh […]
The Challenge Agriculture remains the base of the Nigerian economy, providing the main source of livelihood for most Nigerians. Despite the enormous advantages amassed in agriculture, the sector continues to face many challenges including very low irrigation development and limited adoption of research findings and technologies. At the same time, farmers struggle with the high […]
In Senegal, Club Tiossane—an online, multi-channel delivery service—is working to provide market access for food producers in Senegal. Club Tiossane identifies and sources from hundreds of local food businesses to then distribute products to households, supermarkets, gas stations, and informal shops. In the last year alone, suppliers’ sales grew three times faster than the previous […]
In the town of Boko, about twenty minutes from Parakou, the largest mango-producing community in Benin, Mafia Gnaki, a 60-year-old mango farmer, cares for 16 traditional mango trees in the compound of his home and cultivates an additional 11 hectares of an improved grafted mango variety (Kent). Many of his neighbors do the same because […]
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 […]