Private Sector Development

Support private owned small, medium and micro businesses in the cashew value chain within the Organization of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) through:

The competitive Matching Grant Fund (MGF)

The Matching Grant Fund is designed to maximize outreach across countries and value chains and foster excellence, and ownership. We aim to mobilize additional resources for implementation by introducing and scaling this innovative financial instrument (MGF) that facilitates private investments and promotes the transformation of smallholder agribusinesses. The MGF will support the upgrading of the cashew value chain for competitiveness and resilience with regard to climate change and markets. It includes a readiness programme to accompany potential applicants throughout the process.

The MGF offers you the following benefits:

• Unbureaucratic and easy application process coupled with lower-than-usual entry barriers
• Dedicated Readiness Program to guide you during the application and implementation process
• Technical assistance and advisory on tried-and-tested (face-to-face and online) training topics and approaches
• Opportunities for South-South exchanges with stakeholders from ACP countries
• Financial industry network for future (commercial) funding opportunities

Value addition of cashew

Working to increase the value addition of cashews using various mechanisms such as capacity building and business development services to increase the volume of cashews sold at the national, continental and global levels.

We provide technical support to cashew processors in West Africa and beyond to observe quality assurance measures and obtain required certifications such as HACCP, ISO 2022 etc.

We aim to promote new product development for cashews which will be sustained in the markets within the sub-region. This will potentially increase the consumption of cashew products developed in the Sub-Region.

We seek to support the development of market-driven service packages which will be used to increase awareness, demand and the consumption of cashew products.

Achievement

Under the ComCashew project, 47,000 cashew processing and trading jobs were created of which eighty percent (80%) of these beneficiaries were women.

For African cashew processors, having access to financing is still crucial to their success. To increase their chances of getting loans from financial institutions, ComCashew provided support to processors to write business strategies and prepare their financial and legal papers via training.

There is tremendous potential for processing cashew by-products, particularly cashew apples, can be used for numerous products, including juice, wine, savory foods, and bakery goods. In order to boost the processing of cashew apples and byproducts in Ghana, ComCashew has trained over 150 people as at 2023. Cashew producers and processors have a second source of revenue thanks to the processing of cashew apples.