ACA Partners with World Bank on PRSDPA Project

The World Bank has initiated a Private Sector Rehabilitation and Agribusiness Development Project (PRSPDA[1]) in Guinea-Bissau with the goal of supporting inclusive development of the cashew agribusiness sector and promoting entrepreneurship in other sectors of the economy to achieve it’s goals for the establishment. A contract was signed on the 21^st of February 2016 with the African Cashew Alliance (ACA) and industry alliances operating in about 17 African nations for a six month period amounting to $130,000 to execute the primary diagnosis of pre-selected domestic cashew manufacturing firms in regards to company conditions and capabilities in areas of Entrepreneurship, Technology, Business Management, Food Safety and Hygiene for 15 pre-selected cashew firms across Guinea Bissau.

Under the MIS component of the agreement, ACA is to establish a network of market agents that collect, analyse, and disseminate market information, which will reach about 30,000 cashew stakeholders (farmers, village buyers, exporters, and processors) and help them  make well informed decisions in their cashew marketing. In order to deliver results per the contract, ACA MIS manager is to:

·       Train ANCA staff and extension service officers on information collection, processing, dissemination, storage, and retrieval of that information as well as provide them with training materials, including posters and image boxes, which will subsequently be used to train up to 20,000 smallholder cashew farmers and members of the Associaçao Nacional de Agricultores da Guiné (ANAG).

·       Support ANCA in developing business models for organizational sustainability. These will involve human resource management, donor funding, commercial strategy design, and more. They will be implemented in collaboration with the public or private cashew sector organization in Guinea-Bissau.

[1] Projeto de Reabilitação do Setor Privado e Desenvolvimento Agro-Industrial, http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P127209?lang=en