Africa > West Africa > Agribusiness / Food

Agribusiness / Food in West Africa

  • Falling cocoa prices prompt joint action from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana

    GHANA, 2017/08/01 Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have agreed to set up a joint cocoa body aimed at improving cooperation for a key revenue-earner that has been heavily impacted by a sustained drop in world prices. Announced in June, the Ghana-Côte d'Ivoire Sustainable Cocoa Initiative (SCI) will see the neighbouring nations collaborate on policies to raise production and competitiveness. Other topical issues, such as cross-border smuggling – which can distort both farm gate earnings and crop quality – will as well be addressed.
  • Africa: How to Adapt to Beat Crippling Droughts

    BOTSWANA, 2017/07/17 Right presently, 14 million people across southern Africa face going hungry due to the prolonged drought brought on by the strongest El Niño in 50 years. South Africa will import half of its maize and in Zimbabwe as a lot of as 75 % of crops have been abandoned in the worst-hit areas. With extreme weather, such as failed rains, and drought projected to become additional likely as a result of climate change, some farmers are by presently taking matters into their own hands, and pro-actively diversifying the crops they grow.
  • Africa And Middle East Famines: How China Can Do More

    CHINA, 2017/07/09 The unprecedented outbreak of famine early this year in Africa and the Middle East can be traced to conflict as the root cause. Can China step in to help mitigate the calamity through its Belt and Road initiative? Famine broke out in South Sudan in March 2017. At around the same time, the United Nations announced that Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen were as well on the verge of being hit by long draught, putting around 20 million at risk of starvation. The UN described this as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and appealed to the international community to donate US$4.4 billion — with little success.
  • Niger: Loans for Storing Crops Help Niger's Farmers Absorb Climate Shocks

    NIGER, 2017/06/07 Lack of storage forces farmers to sell their harvest at low prices - but changing that can help them get ahead Surveying his village's stocks of rice, sesame, millet and other food in a storehouse piled high with bags, Amadou Hassane is satisfied - but still a little anxious about the oversupply of baobab leaves. With the rainy season set to start any minute at this time in Niger, Hassane and his fellow farmers need buyers for their leaves before the rains come, driving the prices down as fresh leaves sprout and supply surges across the western region of Tillabery.
  • How to Produce More Food With Less Damage to Soil, Water, Forests

    WORLD, 2017/06/07 Massive agriculture intensification is contributing to increased deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion and the level of greenhouse gas emission, the United Nations warns. To achieve sustainable development we must transform current agriculture and food systems, inclunding by supporting smallholders and family farmers, reducing pesticide and chemical use, and improving land conservation practices, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director-general on May 30 said in Brussels addressing European lawmakers.
  • Gambia: Exiled Gambian Ex-Leader Jammeh 'To Take Up Farming Full Time'

    GAMBIA, 2017/03/12 Gambia's exiled former leader Yahya Jammeh has reportedly disclosed plans to take up farming "full time". Quoting the Jeune Afrique newspaper, a BBC statement said that Jammeh was set to go into farming. An unnamed diplomat in Equatorial Guinea was cited as the source of the story, the statement said.
  • Africa: Factbox-World's Major Famines of the Last 100 Years

    BOTSWANA, 2017/03/12 People are currently starving to death in four nations, and 20 million lives are at risk in the next six months The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said on Tuesday nearly 1.4 million children were at "imminent risk" of death in famines in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Famine was formally declared on Monday in parts of South Sudan, which has been mired in civil war since 2013. People are by presently starving to death in all four nations, and the World Food Programme says additional than 20 million lives are at risk in the next six months. The United Nations defines famine as at the same time as at least 20 % of households in an area face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 %, and two or additional people per 10,000 are dying per day.
  • West Africa: Farmers in Sahel Learn Ways to Avoid Drought Disaster

    BENIN, 2017/03/12 "We have some very good practices in the region. We just need support to scale them up"
  • USAID’s goals of attracting investment and increasing food security in northern Ghana

    UNITED STATES, 2016/10/22 The United States Agency for International Improvment(USAID) and the Ghana Grains Council held the sixth annual Pre-harvest Agribusiness Forum in Sunyani on October 20. The event brought together additional than 1,000 farmers, buyers, processors, equipment dealers, transporters, financial institutions and others who work in agriculture and agribusiness. The aim of the annual event is to foster long-term business relationships, discussions, and the exchange of ideas in order to drive economic increase in Ghana’s agriculture sector.
  • Ghana won’t quit bushmeat, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing

    GHANA, 2016/09/29 The antelope looked exactly like a cartoon deer. It had rust-colored fur, white spots on its hindquarters, and an oddly regal bearing. Its throat had been slit, and it had just been dumped, rather unceremoniously, on the hard-packed black earth of the burning area at Atwemonom, the open-air abattoir at the center of Ghana’s commercial bushmeat trade. The antelope—a female bushbuck—arrived at dawn in a white plastic sack out of a rickety van. It was delivered along with 15 grasscutters (as well known as better cane rats, and which look like large guinea pigs and are about a foot long), eight giant rats, and two hares. The market woman supervising the delivery had the butchers count everything twice. Once the audit was done, a butcher singed the fur off the creatures over an open fire, again hauled the carcasses over to the nearby slaughter slab. That’s something of a misnomer—all the wild game that finds its way to Atwemonom is by presently dead. The slaughter slab is actually where carcasses are scrubbed of singed fur and soot.