WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday 48 million dollars in grants for public-private projects designed to boost the incomes of poor small cocoa and cashew farmers in Africa.
The US foundation, created by the wealthy founder of software giant Microsoft, Bill Gates, and his wife, said it had joined two partnerships marshalling 90 millon dollars to help the small farmers lift themselves out of poverty and reduce hunger.
The projects focus on improved training and access to markets for hundreds of thousands of small cocoa and cashew farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.
"Cocoa and cashews provide income for millions of small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, who, like a majority of the world?s poorest people, live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their food and income," the philanthropy said.
"These projects will help farmers improve the quality and quantity of their crops and provide them with reliable opportunities to sell their crops so they can build better lives for themselves and their families."
The development initiative comes as the global economic crisis has ground growth to a halt, slashed trade volumes and is hitting impoverished countries hard.
The Gates Foundation said it had awarded 23 million dollars to the World Cocoa Foundation for the cocoa project and 25 million dollars to the German development organization Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH for the cashew project.
Those grants were teamed with 42 million dollars in cash and in-kind contributions from private industry, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government, the Seattle, Washington-based foundation said.
"Creative partnerships like these bring together the knowledge of locally based NGOs and governments with the technical know-how and market expertise of private-sector firms, and have the potential to help millions of farmers boost their yields and incomes so they can improve their lives," said Rajiv Shah, director of the foundation's Agricultural Development initiative.
The initiative works with partners in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to strengthen the farm-to-market value chain. "We focus on small farmers, primarily women, who do most of the actual work," Shah told AFP.
The five-year cocoa project aims to help 200,000 smallholder cocoa farming households in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer.
The goal of the 40-million-dollar project headed by the World Cocoa Foundation is to help the cocoa farmers double their incomes by 2013.
Cocoa is West Africa?s largest agricultural export and accounts for 70 percent of the world?s supply. Approximately two million West African smallholder farming households rely on cocoa production for a significant portion of their income, the foundation said.
The Gates Foundation said cash and in-kind contributions come from US manufacturers Hershey, Kraft, and Mars; cocoa processors ADM, Blommer Chocolate Company, and Cargill of the US and Swiss firm Barry Callebaut; and supply chain managers and allied industries Armajaro of Britain, Ecom-Agrocacao of Switzerland, Olam International Ltd. of Singapore, and US coffee retailer Starbucks.
The 50-million-dollar cashew project, to be led by Germany's GTZ, in particular focuses on building processing facilities.
The continent currently produces about one-third of the world's cashew crop, but "a lack of cashew processing facilities in Africa has created major market inefficiencies and denies Africans the economic benefits that accompany jobs in the cashew processing sector," the foundation said.
The project?s goal is to help 150,000 smallholder cashew farming households in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Mozambique increase their incomes by 50 percent by 2012.
Among the project's other supporters are supply chain managers and processors Global Trading Agency and Olam International; branded manufacturers Intersnack Group and Kraft Foods; US retailer Costco Wholesale; and the US Agency for International Development.
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