The three-year partnership aims to support 25,000 farmers and 50 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), as well as open-up new markets for them in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, increasing employment and food security.
The collaboration seeks to develop and empower these farmers and SMEs to help Nestlé meet its goal of boosting from 60% to more than 70% by 2022, its responsibly and regionally produced, high-quality raw materials used in the production of Maggi, Milo and Cerelac. By improving local agricultural produce, imports of food crops for local markets will be reduced.
Low productivity means agricultural output in Central and West Africa is only 56% of the world average. Poor quality and high post-harvest losses impact on raw materials production, while a lack of knowledge, inadequate infrastructure and rising youth unemployment all affect sustainable supply.
The IDH-Nestlé partnership aims to address such challenges by encouraging farmers and SMEs to efficiently produce high quality and high-yield crops using best agricultural practices, and in turn, also help to reduce their environmental impact and the need for natural resources.
Such efforts highlight the importance of this year’s Earth Day (https://bit.ly/3bu9ey7), which focuses on climate action. In 2019, the company announced a new ambition to achieve zero net GHG emissions (https://bit.ly/3eGAXgR) by 2050, in line with the UN climate pledge. To guide its efforts, Nestlé identified several key actions: fight deforestation, reduce food loss and waste, work with farmers to reduce GHG emissions, develop alternative packaging solutions, and help suppliers manage soils through regenerative agriculture and tree planting.
Stakeholders pose after the launching at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Freetown
Sierra Leone’s Minister of Agriculture, Joseph
Ndanema, has acknowledged with optimism the role Solidaridad is playing through
its contribution towards realizing the vision of President Julius Maada Bio to
make agriculture the engine to drive the country’s socio-economic growth and
development through commercialization and promotion of private investment in
the sector.
“Indeed, the work Solidaridad is doing in Sierra
Leone falls well within our agricultural transformation plan, which is the integration of food crops in cocoa and oil
palm intensification to ensure smallholder farmers diversify their income
sources,” said Ndanema while delivering a statement at the formal launch of the
Cocoa Rehabilitation and Intensification Programme (CORIP) and the Sustainable
West Africa Oil Palm Programme (SWAPP) in Freetown on 18th June 2019.
He said the Government of Sierra Leone will work
with partners to develop, expand, promote and support the objectives for the
sub-sector.
Sierra Leone’s agricultural sector has huge
opportunities to promote economic growth in rural communities and create
employment for most young people, who the Minister described as wasting their
time looking for non-existing office jobs. The new drive is to move away from
subsistence to commercial agriculture, agro processing, value addition and
realizing maximum benefit from the richness of the country’s soil and perfect
climate.
The focus is to encourage more local production in
order to increase cash crops, according to the minister. The Government’s
agriculture sector plan continues to address issues and challenges affecting
production, productivity, especially improvement of quality but there is need
to continue more awareness on market orientation or market farming.
Farmers, the minister said, should hope for more
market for their produce. The government is focusing on connecting more
agricultural production and the market to establish the need in the market that
will guide such production.
“In this vein, I will encourage my colleague
minister of Trade to embark on a special mission, identifying markets both
within and outside the country for our cash crops. We are struggling at the
moment because of the flight of resources from sales of our produce and, in
such sales, the income is not coming directly into the country. I believe with
time, we will look into this to boost our foreign exchange earnings and to
support much more robustly our agricultural production activities. Our
immediate priority actions are focused on attracting increased investment in four
areas of great interest to the ministry including development of the rice value
chain, livestock, crops diversification and forestry management and
biodiversity conservation,” said Ndanema.
The ministry of Agriculture acknowledges that cash
crops constitute a major source of foreign exchange earnings and job creation,
and efforts are being made to providing support for rehabilitating existing
plantations and establishment of new ones, adopting the use of improved
varieties of cocoa, coffee, cashew and oil palm.
“This we hope will facilitate the establishment of
cash crops cooperatives and provide training that will build capacity of those
involved in the industry. The aim is to become competitive with other farmers
in the sub region and beyond,” said Ndanema.
Solidaridad’s goal is to create entrepreneurial
famers; farmers who are business oriented. They also want to work with those in
the private sector towards building sustainable institutions around which they
will develop these famers.
According to the Country Representative of
Solidaridad Sierra Leone, Nicholas Jengre, agricultural sector service
provision, which is driven by the private sector in partnership with NGOs and
Government, is a critical driver for changing the agricultural landscape in Sierra
Leone. Hence, Solidaridad is currently working with six private sector partners
for both cocoa (4 partners) and Oil palm (2 partners) in which 15 Farmer
Support Centers (FSCs) have been established to provide services such as
improved planting materials, extension advice, training, as well as assist
farmers to cultivate a savings culture for subsequent linkage to the rural
banks to access credit facilities.
“We recognized that for various reasons things have
been tough for Sierra Leone and therefore part of our solution is to work with
famers with the view to making them long term business people, not to create a
dependency syndrome, which many development non-governmental organizations have
done over the years,” said Isaac Gyamfi, Regional Director of Solidaridad West
Africa, also speaking at the launching.
The CORIP and SWAPP programme is funded by the Dutch
government through the Royal Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in
Accra- Ghana, Cote DÍvoire, Liberia and now Sierra Leone. Amsterdam is the
biggest importer of cocoa in the world. A lot of cocoa comes from West Africa
and other parts of the continent to Amsterdam to be manufactured into consumer
goods. The Netherlands have also signed together with other countries the
Amsterdam Declaration which aims at ensuring that by 2025 all cocoa imported in
Amsterdam and Europe at large should be sustainable and traceable. It should be
produced without child labour and destruction of the environment. Hence the
support to promote policy, investment and trade in West Africa, especially in
Sierra Leone.
On the eve of the launching, the Dutch Ambassador
Ron Strikker, covering the West Africa sub-region, visited farming sites in
Kenema and Kailahun Districts in the Eastern region of Sierra Leone.
Solidaridad has supported local farmers to plant oil palm in the regions. The
team visited Vaahun village, Gbaama, Benduma and the Gold Tree oil palm nursery
site in Daru.
The famers are intercropping the farms with
groundnuts, potatoes, corn and cassava to enable them earn money to sustain
themselves and their families while waiting for the oil palm to start
production from the fourth year of planting. The famers confessed that they
never knew about this intercropping model before but Solidaridad introduce them
to it and they are so happy for the innovative solutions of Solidairdad.
In all, a total of 966 hectares have been planted by
3, 661 farmers (37% females) across 13 chiefdoms in Kenema and Kailahun.
His Excellency Ron Strkker said it is important for
sustainable oil palm and cocoa plantation in West Africa because a prosperous
West Africa is of importance not only for those living there but for Europe and
the Netherlands as well.
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