Guinea-Bissau cashew trade halted in tax protest

by Alberto Dabo

Cashew traders in Guinea Bissau, the world's seventh biggest supplier of the cocktail snack, went on strike on April 21 to protest a new tax.

Cashews are the biggest revenue earner in the tiny 1.6 million people West African state and the industry employs 250,000 families, mostly through small-scale farming operations.

"We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax," said Mamadou Yoro Djamanca, the head of the exporters' association. "We will start immediately to shut down all trading posts and warehouses in Bissau and the interior," he said.

The country's leading opposition party warned the government of President Malam Bacai Sanha of large demonstrations if the tax was not lifted.

Guinea Bissau, wedged between Guinea and Senegal on West Africa's coast, is among the world's poorest countries and is struggling to contain a growing drugs trade. ($1=449.3 Cfa Franc)

Reuters

Guinea Bissau farmers urged to diversify beyond rice, cashew

Aid agencies are encouraging communities to diversify their agricultural production in Guinea-Bissau, where 90 percent of farmers grow rice or cashews to survive, making them vulnerable to erratic rainfall and price fluctuations.

“The rains sometimes come very early, sometimes stop very early, so there’s a problem with rice,” said the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) programme manager in Guinea-Bissau Rui Fonseca. “And price fluctuations make cashews uncertain…We are telling producers you can continue with rice and cashews but you can plant other things too.”

Farmers can attract more consistent prices with other crops, said Fonseca. Tomatoes and carrots currently sell at US$2.30 per kilogram in the capital Bissau.

FAO and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) run programmes aimed to help farmers cope with shocks and boost their cash-crop income while promoting nutritional diversity.

Average income in Guinea-Bissau is $1.30 per day, according to the UN.

FAO, prompted by the food price crisis, has been encouraging farmers in Oio and Bafata regions to grow millet, taro, peanuts and green beans since mid-2008.

Raw cashews which currently sell for 28 US cents per kilogram, down from 60 cents earlier in the season, do not yield enough income for farmers to live on, said Safietou Sanya, president of an ICRC-supported market gardeners association in Three Kilometres village, 3km from the northern city of San Domingos in Cacheu region.

ICRC works with village associations in the region, planting gardens, building wells, training people in gardening techniques and distributing seeds, said ICRC’s Guinea-Bissau programme manager Alfa Diallo. In Three Kilometres rows of lemon, avocado and mango saplings are lined up for sale at $3.40 a plant.

“This year I was able to save enough money through [the garden] to send my children to school,” said association president Sanya. She and fellow members planted and sold onions, peppers, cabbage, okra and tomatoes this year, she told IRIN.

Die-hard habits

But despite the potential benefits of moving beyond cashews, aid groups encounter reluctance among some farmers to change the crops they grow – or eat, ICRC’s economic security adviser Ilda Pina told IRIN. “All they have known is rice and cashews….To change people’s habits is very difficult; we have to move very slowly.”

Some ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau do not eat tomatoes or green beans, she said. “It is not in their tradition.”

The government estimates that 20 to 30 percent of inhabitants in the north are moderately malnourished, though many northern communities supplement their staples with nutrient-rich wild foods such as palm oil, baobab fruit, cashew fruit and tamarind, according to Pina.

Aid agencies encourage farmers to eat the vegetables they cannot sell.

Even with diversification a number of challenges remain for farmers in the region. Three Kilometres is near San Domingos, but approximately half of the vegetables produced by farmers in villages further north go to waste because members cannot reach nearby markets, said Sanya. The route connecting villages north of San Domingos is a dirt track that is impassable for much of the six-month rainy season.

IRIN

De-mining efforts allow Guinea Bissau farmers to return to work

For 35 years, hundreds of villagers living in Suar in the Cacheu region of northern Guinea-Bissau have been too scared to cultivate the land around their villages for fear of landmines.

The town, 40km from Ingoré near the northern border with Senegal, has been contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) laid by the Portuguese in the 1974 liberation war.

“The area was not safe,” said Daniel Camara, 28, he cycled along a path once surrounded by mines. “But now we can move around. We are no longer living in fear - they’ve taken our bad luck away.”

Since July, HUMAID, an international NGO, has cleared three-quarters of the 98,000 sqm of contaminated land in the two demining sites. Sappers found 21 landmines, plus several unexploded ordnances.

“This was nothing like the concentrations of mines we found left over from conflict in the capital Bissau and Buruntuma [in the east],” said John Blacken, founder of HUMAID and ex-US ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, “but nonetheless the area is not safe until every mine is gone.”

Most of the inhabitants of Suar and Bintam villages fled during the war, returning afterwards to cultivate their crops. After one death, two injuries and the deaths of 150 cattle, they formed teams to search for mines, removing 250, according to Bintam village chief Dan Sucar.

Despite this, many were still too afraid to access their land. “We were not able to grow crops – we brought less food home – it has really affected our lives,” Sucar said.

As soon as sappers started to declare sections of Suar and Bintam landmine- and UXO-free, farmers moved back, planting cashew trees, millet, corn and beans within the “mine-free” markers. These farmers, like 90 percent of Guinea-Bissauans, rely on subsistence agriculture to survive.

Landmines have had a significant effect on agricultural output: the most recent mines laid - in the north by Casamance rebels in 2006 and 2007 - left most of the cashew crop unharvested, according to the government.

Land has remained contaminated for decades because after the liberation war the military did not have the resources to clear mines, Blacken said. It took the dramatic impact of weekly accidents in the capital, Bissau following the end of the civil war in 1999 to focus attention on the mine problem, he said.

Since 1999, HUMAID has cleared 16 sites contaminated by mines and UXO. Mines were laid during the 1970s liberation war, the 1998 civil war and the 2006 Casamance conflict. HUMAID collaborates with the National Coordination Centre for Mine Action (CAMI), the government body in charge of coordinating all demining activities.

The overall number of victims is unknown because there is no national database, says Tomas Pires Lourenco, an adviser at CAMI, but records kept from 1999-2008 cite 1,139 landmine and UXO victims, 218 in the capital. In 2009, UXO killed a further four people and injured 10, mainly in Guinea-Bissau’s central Bafata region.
Victims have had no recourse to official government assistance but Lourenco is trying to raise funds for such a programme and is looking for an official in one of the stronger ministries to advocate on victims’ behalf.

CAMI, HUMAID and other partners, including LUTCOM, an NGO, are making steady progress in clearing sites, but their activities have been stopped several times when funding has run dry.

Guinea-Bissau has signed the Ottawa Mine Ban treaty and has pledged it will be mine-free by 2011. But this will only be possible if an additional US$5.5 million becomes available, said Lourenco. CAMI has only enough funds to last until the end of 2009.

While a landmine can cost less than $10, removal can be as much as $1,000 per mine, when training, compliance to international standards, human resources and equipment are taken into account, estimates Blacken.

A 2008 land impact survey estimated 80 sites with the possible presence of UXO and/or landmines.

However, Blacken is optimistic Guinea-Bissau is on track to meet the 2011 target. “There is no reason to think we cannot reach the 2011 goal – at least we are all now working with that in mind,” he said.

IRIN

Hong Kong tycoon to invest in Africa-based biofuels

by Elizabeth Balkan

Hong Kong magnate Stanley Ho is at it again. Not formulating a “Ho Plan” for Hong Kong energy security that centers around wind power, as the growing similarities between him and T. Boone Pickens might suggest. Stanley Ho’s investment du jour, while on par with his recently established eco-trend, will not be in Asia. Rather, the biofuel play will be located off of the Western coast of Africa.

Geocapital, a Macau-based investment holding company started in 2007 and comprised of partner investors Stanley Ho and Jorge Ferro Ribeiro, is in negotiations with the Government of Cape Verde to install a biofuels research and development center on the African archipelago, Portugal’s Lusa news agency recently reported.

The pair hopes to take advantage of Cape Verde’s experience producing biofuels from jatropha, a crop that yields ten times the output of corn plants. Jatropha-based biofuel is considered one of the best candidates for future biofuel production, and has already been successfully tested as a substitute for jet fuel in commercial airplanes. The poisonous seed has a long history as a fuel source: in the early 1900s, it was exported to France and Portugal for use in streetlamps.

Ho and Ribeiro plan to plant jatropha in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, where they also own biofuel production facilities, later this year, and start producing the biofuels within two or three years.

Ho hopes to become one of the world’s top investors in biofuels, pledging nearly US$40 billion over the next ten years in biofuel production throughout Portugese-speaking countries. According to his firm’s estimates, Geocapital’s production is expected to reach 14 million tons per year within 10 to 15 years, roughly one-tenth worldwide production.

As long as oil prices remain at their current levels, however, Ho’s biofuel play alone will not soon restore him from his current ranking of #703 on the Forbes billionaires list, to within the top 150, where he previously reigned. Perhaps he should consider drafting a “Ho Plan” for Hong Kong, or China, just to be safe.

Sustainblog

Europe takes Africa’s fish, and migrants follow

Ale Nodye, the son and grandson of fishermen in this northern Senegalese village, said that for the past six years he netted barely enough fish to buy fuel for his boat. So he jumped at the chance for a new beginning. He volunteered to captain a wooden canoe full of 87 Africans to the Canary Islands in the hopes of making their way illegally to Europe.

The 2006 voyage ended badly. He and his passengers were arrested and deported. His cousin died on a similar mission not long afterward. Nonetheless, Mr. Nodye, 27, said he intended to try again. “I could be a fisherman there,” he said. “Life is better there. There are no fish in the sea here anymore.”

Many scientists agree. A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.

That has crippled coastal economies and added to the surge of illegal migrants who brave the high seas in wooden pirogues hoping to reach Europe. While reasons for immigration are as varied as fish species, Europe’s lure has clearly intensified as northwest Africa’s fish population has dwindled.

Last year roughly 31,000 Africans tried to reach the Canary Islands, a prime transit point to Europe, in more than 900 boats. About 6,000 died or disappeared, according to one estimate cited by the United Nations.

The region’s governments bear much of the blame for their fisheries’ decline. Many have allowed a desire for money from foreign fleets to override concern about the long-term health of their fisheries. Illegal fishermen are notoriously common; efforts to control fishing, rare.

But in the view of West African fishermen, Europe is having its fish and eating them, too. Their own waters largely fished out, European nations have steered their heavily subsidized fleets to Africa.

European Union officials insist that their bloc, which has negotiated fishing deals with Africa since 1979, is a scapegoat for Africa’s management failures and the misdeeds of other foreign fleets. They argue that African officials oversell fishing rights, inflate potential catches and allow pirate vessels and local boats free rein in breeding grounds.

Pierre Chavance, a scientist with the French Institute for Research and Development, said both foreign fleets and African governments allowed financial considerations to trump concerns for fish or local fishermen. “One side has a big interest to sell, and the other side has a big interest to buy,” he said. “The negotiations are based upon what people want to hear, not the reality.”

In Mauritania, lobsters vanished years ago. The catch of octopus — now the most valuable species — is four-fifths of what it should be if it were not overexploited. A 2002 report by the European Commission found that the most marketable fish species off the coast of Senegal were close to collapse — essentially sliding toward extinction.

“The sea is being emptied,” said Moctar Ba, a consultant who once led scientific research programs for Mauritania and West Africa.

In a region where at least 200,000 people depend on the sea for their livelihoods, local investments in fishing industries are drying up with the fish stocks. In Guinea-Bissau, fishermen who were buying more boats less than a decade ago now complain they are in debt and looking to get out of the business.

“Before, my whole family could live on what we caught in one pirogue,” said Niadye Diouf, 28, whose Senegalese family sold their pirogue for $500 to pay for an illegal — and ultimately unsuccessful — voyage to Spain. “Now even five pirogues would not be enough.”

Fishermen like Mr. Diouf argue that Africans should have first priority in their own waters — an idea enshrined in a 1994 United Nations treaty on the seas that acknowledges the right of local governments to sell foreigners fishing rights only to their surplus stocks. But that rule has been repeatedly violated along northwest Africa’s nearly 2,000-mile coast.

Studies dating to 1991 indicated that Senegal’s fishery was in trouble. In 2002, a scientific report commissioned by the European Union stated that the biomass of important species had declined by three-fourths in 15 years — a finding the authors said should “cause significant alarm.” But the week the report was issued, European Union officials signed a new four-year fishing deal with Senegal, agreeing to pay $16 million a year to fish for bottom-dwelling species and tuna.

Four years later, Mauritania followed suit. Despite reports that octopus were overfished by nearly a third, in 2006 Mauritania’s government sold six more years’ access to 43 European Union vessels for $146 million a year — the equivalent of nearly a fifth of Mauritania’s government budget.

“I don’t know a government in the region that can say no,” said Mr. Chavance, the French scientist. “This is good money, and they need it.”

Sid-Ahmed Ould-Abeid, who leads a Mauritanian association of small fishermen, said: “The E.U. has the money, so it has the power. It is easier to sacrifice the local fishermen.”

“We can’t compete with the European Union,” Ahmed Cherif said as he strolled past row after row of idle pirogues. “The government should have kept this resource for Mauritanians. Let these people work.”

Europe is just one foreign contributor to fish declines. Countries from Asia and the former Soviet Union also dispatched ships to ply northwest Africa’s seas. But often those fleets stay for shorter durations and without the same promises of responsible fishing and local development.

In fact, little development has taken place since the European Union signed its first fish deal with a West African nation in 1979. The huge economic benefits that come from processing and exporting the catch remain firmly in European hands.

African governments either misspent or diverted the funds earmarked for development to more pressing needs, while the Europeans sometimes made only token efforts on promised projects. Nouadhibou harbor, for instance, remains littered with 107 wrecked fishing trawlers eight years after the European Union promised to clear them to help develop the port.

In their defense, European officials say they moved to reform their fishing agreements in 2003 to address criticism that ship operators were overfishing and were undercutting local fishermen. Fabrizio Donatella, who heads the European Union unit that negotiates fishing deals, says the new agreements are models of responsible fishing and transparency.

Examples of mismanagement abound. The number of pirogues in six northwest African countries exploded from 3,000 to 19,000 in the last half-century, but Senegal and other nations have only recently begun to license them.

Guinea-Bissau, a nation of 1.4 million people, is a prime example of how not to run a fishery. According to Vladimir Kacyznski, a marine scientist with the University of Washington, no one has comprehensively studied the nation’s coastal waters for at least 20 years.

Daniel Gomes, Guinea-Bissau’s 12th fishing minister in eight years, said he had tried to be conservative in how much access to grant foreigners, despite paltry scientific data and severe economic pressures.

Still, asked whether his nation would end up with empty waters, he replied: “This prospect is not out of the question. This could happen.”

NYTimes

Guinea Bissau cashew, fruit producer group seeks trade, technical partnerships

by Chido Makunike

The Organization for Cooperation and Promotion on Agriculture for West-Africa (OCOOPAWA) is an NGO founded in 2001 in Guinea Bissau with 11 affiliates. It works with local farmers in areas of food security and technical assistance for marketing of their produce.

Among the produce are cashew nuts, oranges and mangoes. Raw cashew nuts are available at any time of the year, especially from May to October. Fresh mangoes are available between May and June, and oranges from November to December.

OCOOPAWA seeks trade partnerships, as well as technical capacity building and financial support for its projects. The organization's contact person is Mr. Paulinus Ogbonnaya Mbah, who can be reached on phone number +245 664 04 40 and email address: agricoop2000@yahoo.com

African Agriculture

Chinese to invest $60m in Guinea Bissau's cashew industry

Investors from the People's Republic of China have pooled an estimated 60 million dollars to develop the cashew industry in Guinea-Bissau.

The announcement was made in December 2006 by the chairman of the Guinea-Bissau Traders Association (ACGB), Malam Nanco, in the country's capital Bissau during a week-long visit by the Chinese businessmen. Nanco said the investment will help cashew farmers to sell most of the their produce on the international market.

West African cashew growers have been battling with several problems that threaten their viability. Among them are low prices for the raw product, non-existent or low value-addition and increasing competition from countries like Vietnam. The Food and Agricultural Organization recently warned the government of Guinea Bissau against interfering with market forces by setting a floor price for the crop, thereby chasing many of the Indian and Pakistani middlemen to other growing nations and regions, and causing hardship for local farmers.

The Chinese businessmen also expressed interest in other agricultural activities, particularly rice farming and the fisheries sector.

APA News

Guinea Bissau warned to avoid repeating cashew policy mistakes

As more than 100,000 tonnes of cashews begin to ripen on trees around Guinea-Bissau, agricultural economists have warned the government against making the same policy decisions as in 2006 that left many farmers unable to sell their produce, triggering hunger.

Analysts say the government sought to please farmers before elections in 2006 by raising the price per kilogramme of unprocessed cashews from the standard 250 CFA (about 50 US cents) to 350 CFA. But international traders, mostly Indians who form a cartel, refused to pay the higher price. Unable to sell their cashews, farmers could not buy rice, the country's staple food. Eventually the price of cashews crashed with traders currently buying cashews for around 50 CFA (10 cents) a kilogramme.

"The government should allow market forces to function and stop setting the price at which farmers should sell their cashews," said Marco Giovannoni, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) West African regional advisor on food security. He took part in a mission to Guinea-Bissau at the end of February with an agricultural expert from the Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) to evaluate the country's food situation.

Analysts say the issue will likely become a problem around mid-year. For now people can live off the rice they are growing, but from July to October people will depend on imported rice while waiting to harvest the next season's rice crop. The same Asian traders who export cashews import Asian rice. They sell it for the equivalent of 50 cents a kilogramme, the same price for which they used to buy cashews. But now farmers have to give 5kg of cashews for 1kg of rice.

Agriculture minister Sola N'Quilim Na Bitchita said on March 12 that the government would again set a price for cashews. "It is the government's job to inform farmers about the value of their produce on the international market," he said.

For Giovannoni, this would be a mistake, particularly if the government bows to local pressure to raise the price back up to 250 CFA. "How can the price suddenly jump from 50 CFA to 250 CFA?" he said. "This would be a huge disincentive to the Indian traders, who are not in a hurry to return to Guinea-Bissau anyway."

The traders have not returned since leaving last year. "The government had created so many obstacles for us," Norbet Djidonou, a local representative for the Singapore-based conglomerate Olam, the largest cashew trading company operating in Guinea-Bissau. "I don't know if we will return or buy elsewhere." Olam shut down in the middle of last year's season when the government decided that it had to pay an extra US$2.4 million in taxes and confiscated 6,000kg of the cashews it had already bought. Olam and other international traders are also hobbled by a recent law that prohibits them from buying directly from the farmers. Many of the local businessmen they must go through are at the same time senior government officials - a practice that presents a serious conflict of interest, experts say.

The FAO/CILSS mission report called on the government to make several policy changes such as reducing the taxes and various tariffs it imposes on cashew exporters and keeping the high cost of operating out of the Bissau port in line with the costs of other ports in the region. With cashews accounting for 85 percent of Guinea-Bissau's total exports and Vietnam rapidly boosting its cashew production, Giovannoni said the government needs to do all it can to avoid its only export crop from collapsing.

source : IRIN

Tough times for Guinea-Bissau cashew farmers

Cashews account for an estimated 80 percent of the foreign exchange earnings of the small West African nation of Guinea-Bissau . Eighty-five percent of the population depends on the trade of the country's single cash crop.

The Voice of America's Senegal bureau reports that changes in government policy are having unforeseen negative effects on cashew farmers, compounded by shifts in world markets that have seen prices drop.

Cashew farmer Jerry Ndiaye says government officials have been trying to regulate and curb activity by Senegalese and Indian buyers, but that this has actually hurt local farmers. He explains that a high fixed government price meant to aid the viability of cashew farming is not being met by private buyers and the government has no credit, only promissory notes.

Most of these cashews will be processed in India - the major center for cashew production - before being used in local cuisine there or exported to the West as an appetizer. A very small amount is processed in Guinea-Bissau because of recurrent electricity outages and instability.

A kilo of processed organic cashews can sell for $30 or more in Western countries. In Guinea-Bissau, a farmer is now lucky to get $0.25 for a kilo. More border controls to regulate the movement of cashews have also lowered prices in the field. To make matters worse, the allure of cashews has been reduced in India, Europe and the United States following health scares and reports the crunchy food caused allergies. This all makes the price farmers get in
Guinea-Bissau lower. Some of the buyers have moved their business to Senegal's nearby Casamance region, encouraging farmers there to produce more cashews.

Some cashew farmers are going back to growing rice again, alongside millet, potatoes and mangoes or trying fishing. They say cashews can be used for the fruit, to roast as a treat, or to make the local alcohol, soumsoum, but that it is just not lucrative enough to sell to foreigners anymore.

*********************************************

Although export of niche crops have provided African farmers with export and good income opportunities, the problems with cashew in Guinea-Bissau illustrate how farmers can become dangerously vulnerable to over-reliance on the export market with all its vagaries. With less than one percent of the final retail price ending up in the farmer's pocket, the story also shows how the producer is often one of the weakest links in the earnings chain, particularly where s/he does no value addition to the raw product.