Ghana discards an estimated 2 million metric tons of cashew apples each year, pointing to an untapped source of income as women and young people are trained to turn the highly perishable fruit into drinks and other commercial products.
The initiative, supported by the European Union, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and Germany, is targeting 1,000 women and young people under the Matching Grant Fund project, known as Cashew Apple as a Recipe for Women and Youth Empowerment.
The programme, implemented by OFI (Olam Food Ingredients), provides training in harvesting and post-harvest handling, cashew apple processing, product development, business management and marketing. Its focus is to move cashew apples from being an agricultural byproduct that often rots on farms into a source of commercial value and livelihoods.
“I sell the cashew drinks the most. The price depends on the bottle size. A large one goes for 15 cedis, and others for 5 cedis,” said Victoria Meboau, a member of one of the participating cooperatives.
The economic opportunity is constrained by the fruit’s short shelf life. Farmers and cooperative members previously had to collect cashew apples on foot, often carrying heavy loads over long distances. The delays increased the amount of fruit lost before it could reach processing facilities.
To address that bottleneck, 15 tricycles have been provided to 15 cooperatives, predominantly made up of women, to improve the collection and transportation of cashew apples.
The cooperatives will be responsible for managing and maintaining the vehicles, giving them greater control over a critical part of the supply chain while reducing the time between harvesting and processing.
The intervention forms part of the Joint Action Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains (BSF4RAVC). The Matching Grant Fund is co-funded by the EU International Partnerships under the Samoa Agreement with the OACPS Secretariat and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ.
The project underscores the wider challenge facing Ghana’s agricultural sector: increasing the value generated from crops beyond their primary products while reducing post-harvest losses.
For cashew-growing communities, converting discarded apples into beverages and other products could provide an additional revenue stream, particularly for women and young people, if processing capacity, market access and reliable collection systems can be sustained.
A useful next step for the story would be to quantify the potential market value of the 2 million tons of discarded cashew apples and establish how much participating cooperatives currently earn from processed products.
