![]() ‘Before we took part in the training courses, the dealers often used to cheat us. And not only has she more nuts, she also sells them at a higher price. And the success is tangible: ‘I used to harvest five to eight sacks of cashews, this year it was 16,’ she says with pride. Victoria Ataa has taken part in several of these training courses. Many of them have been able to double their income from cashews in this way.’įarmer Victoria Ataa is a pioneer of cashew nut cultivation in Africa. ‘This approach has so far benefited more than 430,000 farmers in participating countries. ‘Experts give farmers advice on how they can increase their yields – and therefore their income – through improved growing, harvesting and storage techniques,’ explains Rita Weidinger from GIZ. The African Cashew initiative, which in 2016 was awarded the DAC innovation prize of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), targets the entire process: from production and processing to sales and export. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and in cooperation with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and over 30 private sector partners, GIZ implemented the programme in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Mozambique. The African Cashew initiative (ACi) was launched in 2009 with the aim of harnessing this enormous untapped potential. In many other African countries, the nuts were left rotting in the fields, while worldwide demand and prices continued to rise. But Ghana was not the only country making little use of its cashew trees. At the same time, they had little idea who might buy the nuts and at what price, so few farmers showed much interest in the kernels – even today they remain a rarely used ingredient in Ghanaian cuisine. Most farmers at the time had no idea how to increase yields from the trees, nor how to store and process the nuts. A rarely used ingredient in Ghanaian cuisineĪtaa tried to find out everything there was to know about cashew nuts in Ghana. Moreover, he went on, there were no signs of the trend slowing and Ghana was one of the best areas for growing cashews anywhere in the world. ![]() He told her that global demand for the sweet, buttery nuts was growing by around ten per cent each year, with prices rising even more quickly. He was chair of the Cashew Industry Association of Ghana. A woman like you should be growing cashew nuts,’ said the customer. ‘A woman like you should not be sitting here on the roadside. Then one day, while the farmer was wondering how she would feed her five children and send them to school, a man came over and spoke to her. A few ‘strange Indians’ used to buy the nuts from the children at a knockdown price, Ataa recalls. But in the same fields where Ataa’s grandfather had once planted yams, manioc and corn, nobody knew what to do with this peculiar, unfamiliar fruit. Only the trees with the strange, kidney-shaped kernels seemed unaffected by the drought. As the dry periods became more frequent, the harvests dwindled. It was, the proud woman explains, an undignified job for a farmer, but her fields were just not productive enough to make a living from. Now farmers have recognised the tree’s potential.įourteen years ago, Ataa used to sit by the roadside selling water in plastic bags. Its fruits have not only freed the 66-year-old from abject poverty, they have also made her a role model for thousands of other farmers across Africa.Įxotic fruits’: For a long time nobody in Ghana knew what to do with cashews. ![]() ![]() The Ghanaian farmer is seated under a cashew tree in the village of Congo. These trees have changed my life, they have made me a happy woman,’ says Victoria Ataa, lovingly patting the bark of the tree that provides her with shade from the midday sun. ![]()
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