(Business in Cameroon) - Last October 17, the Cameroonian government adopted a document on the national strategy for the development of cashew value chain covering the 2019-23 period, in the capital Yaoundé.

The document, set with support from the German organization GIZ, dropped an exhaustive overview of this still embryonic sector. It also explores all components (land availability, institutional arrangements for promoting cashew cultivation, plant problems, stakeholders, processing incentives, financing, etc.) aimed at making cashew an equally important cash crop in Cameroon as cocoa, coffee or cotton.

According to the head of German cooperation in Cameroon, the implementation of this strategy will not only enable the Cameroonian government to create thousands of jobs in rural areas, increase tax revenues and incomes for rural populations, but also to achieve its objective of restoring 12 million hectares of deforested forest by 2030.

The validation of this strategy comes at a time when the Agricultural Research Institute for Development (IRAD) is deploying a program to produce 10 million cashew plants by 2021, equivalent to about 100,000 hectares of plantations in the country.

Brice R. Mbodiam