Cashews

In sub-Saharan Africa, TechnoServe is working to create new industries and incomes from products typically discarded as waste during cashew and coffee processing.

Many popular foods and beverages are grown by smallholder farmers around the world. These farmers are experiencing increasing challenges as they struggle to grow their crops in the face of extreme weather, droughts, floods, and other threats. Learn about a few of the crops most affected by climate change and what TechnoServe is doing to help these farmers build climate resilience.

The major new project will spark economic growth through investment, job creation, and business support in West Africa's cashew industry

Climate change threatens to reshape our world, but its effects will not be distributed equally. Read more from Agrilinks.

Emerging technology solutions combining aerial and phone imagery with machine learning could solve long-standing challenges in getting accurate, timely data for trade and investment decisions in the global nut and dried fruit industry.

In this series, we check back with TechnoServe program participants previously featured on our blog, documenting how their lives have changed and progressed. In our previous story on Elisabeth Atchade, a cashew farmer in Benin, the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant market panic left her with uncertainty about the future of her cashew production. Find out how she is doing now, eight months later.

For over 50 years, TechnoServe has helped hardworking women and men in the developing world gain the skills, connections, and confidence to create self-sustaining businesses and build a path out of poverty. In part two of this series, we ask a few of these farmers and entrepreneurs to share how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their lives and how they are coping with its effects.

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting farmers, entrepreneurs, and workers across the globe, but its economic impact on women is particularly severe. How can the private sector, governments, and civil society ensure that women can continue to do business amid the pandemic?

In Benin, the cashew industry has the potential to help hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty. However, poor agricultural practices often limit their productivity and incomes. TechnoServe is using remote sensing and machine learning to map cashew production and target agricultural training to farmers who need it most.

Cashew has the potential to transform Benin’s economy – and the lives of the smallholder farmers who grow it. However, many farmers lack the technical knowledge they need to get the best harvest from their cashew orchards. TechnoServe is developing a digital chatbot to help farmer trainers quickly access the information they need, allowing them to effectively support more farmers.