ABIDJAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua)-- At the opening of the investment forum for the cashew industry, held Monday in Abidjan, Ivorian Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Food Production Kobenan Kouassi Adjoumani strongly encouraged national and international investors to invest in the cashew sector in Cote d'Ivoire.
The minister emphasized that the annual production of cashew nuts in Cote d'Ivoire has significantly increased, rising from 500,000 tons in 2013 to 1.2 million tons in 2023. This growth is the result of several government programs and projects aimed at energizing the cashew sector and boosting investments.
However, he pointed out that the added value from the local processing of this product is still largely underexploited. In fact, in 2023, only 21 percent of the Ivorian cashew nut production was processed locally, which is far from the government's goal of achieving 50 percent local processing by 2030.
To achieve this objective, the minister called for massive investments to competitively increase national production and processing capacities of cashew nuts in Cote d'Ivoire.
It is worth noting that Cote d'Ivoire is the world's leading producer of cashew nuts. On the first day of this forum, which will continue until Wednesday, the Cotton-Cashew Council announced the signing of three memorandums of understanding worth 16 billion CFA francs (about 27 million U.S. dollars) with investors.
