Stakeholders empowered to boost cassava value chain

The Ghana Industrial Cassava Stakeholder Platform (GICSP), an information hub for the cassava value chain through its ‘Ghana Cassava Industrialization Partnership Project’, has empowered stakeholders in the value chain to boost cassava production and supply.

The stakeholders included cassava farmers, processors, aggregators, and input suppliers in the Volta, Oti, Western, Eastern, Central and Ashanti Regions.

They were also encouraged to register with the GICSP for a robust cassava supply chain through supporting nucleus, commercial and smallholder farmers in better agronomical practices and for onward market linkages.

This was contained in a statement from the GICSP, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

The statement explained that the step was to focus on establishing the domestic value chains well to feed the export markets.

GICSP, with support from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), has a mandate and responsibility to facilitate and coordinate structured markets for its members, develop a public-private partnership, build capacities of members and engage in policy advocacy in the inclusion of cassava in manufactured products as substitutes to imported ones, the statement explained.

The project, it said, sought to adopt an inclusive multi-disciplinary intervention through a consortium of seven partners to provide market access, agro-inputs business solutions, market information systems, technical training and strengthen farmer-based organisations to achieve desired results.

The seven partners are Agri-Impact Consult, a value chain management institution and lead implementer, Ohumpong Investments Limited and JOSMA Agro-Industries as primary processors, planting materials suppliers and lead aggregators, and Food Research Institute (FRI) for capacity building and compliance to quality assurance and quality control for value addition through processing.

Others are the Crop Research Institute to supply cuttings of improved varieties high yielding in starch and train farmers on good agricultural practices, Ministry of Trade and Industry to spearhead the development of a national cassava strategy plan and facilitate access to both domestic and export market.

The National Cassava platform is also a key stakeholder with a responsibility to promote policy advocacy and market development for the value chain actors.

As part of activities to promote cassava as a strategic commodity, the statement said, both electronic and print media were used to reach out to the public.

The GICSP believed that prioritizing the cassava value chain in the government’s one district one factory initiative to support the creation of industrial cassava processing hubs/enclaves in adjoining districts to create economics of scale and synergies for feedstock suppliers, off-takers and logistics had to be promoted.