ACA Attends the AgCLIR Assessment Stakeholders’ Roundtable Discussion in Ghana



On the 7th of April 2017, ACA’s Head of Sector Organization & Advocacy, Olivier Kabre and Communications Assistant Blessing Okam were invited to attend an assessment Stakeholders’ Roundtable Discussion held by the Enabling Environment for Food Security Project, which is being implemented by Fintrac. 

After presentations from the team, participants were divided into the five aspects of agriculture sector in Ghana and tasked to identify challenges and possible solution for each area. ACA contributed to the import and export sector where documentations, technical food safety, market linkages, and transportation (in land) were raised as major issues.  Olivier Kabré mentioned during the discussion that the non-enforcement of existing regulation or lake of rules has enormously created problems in the cashew sector. He further mentioned the need to enforce law in the cashew value chain and to sensitize the stakeholders to follow and abide by these laws. However a close monitoring of the policies implementation is critical because they evolve and need to be reviewed with time. 

Fintrac is a US-based consulting company, which develops agricultural solutions to end hunger and poverty. For 25 years, Fintrac has worked with local and international partners to increase production, improve post-harvest handling, add value, and develop markets and competitive value chains for the world's most vulnerable farmers and communities. The Enabling Environment for Food Safety Project happens to be one of the many projects of Fintrac. This project, supported by USAID, aims at supporting inputs suppliers, access to finance, domestic markets, transport, and the import and export aspects of the agricultural sector of Ghana.

Overall, the meeting was productive and proved educational as it allowed inputs from a wide variety of stakeholders. ACA supports this project and hopes to collaborate with Fintrac in the future.