Mozambique seeks to revive cashew industry

Mozambique's deputy minister of agriculture has said the government is working to establish all the necessary conditions for cashew production to play a major role in the country's development. Catarina Pajume was speaking at the opening session of the first annual meeting of the African Cashew Alliance (ACA), which brought together representatives of nine African cashew producers.

She said it was crucial to establish "a solid public/private partnership", capable of bringing together synergies so as to meet the challenges posed by an increasingly globalised and competitive market. "We must know how to use the initiatives of private sector investment in cashew to satisfy the international market", she said. "This sector creates wealth and guarantees the livelihoods of millions of Mozambican rural families".

She said the government is concerned about improving working conditions in cashew processing plants, which involves the adoption of new technologies. She also wanted to see improvements in the wages paid to cashew workers.

She pointed out that in 2005/06, Africa produced 585,000 tonnes of raw cashew nuts, but only 10 per cent of these nuts were processed in Africa. The rest was exported raw, mostly to India. This failure to add value to Africa's cashews, Pajume said, was costing the continent money and thousands of jobs.

Mozambique's own cashew industry was all but destroyed when the World Bank demanded, in 1995, that the government remove protection from the industry - a measure which worked in favour of those who were exporting the raw nuts to India. All the large, mechanised Mozambican factories closed down. But in recent years there has been a revival, based on smaller plants using labour-intensive manual or semi-manual shelling methods.

allafrica.com