The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) awarded Fresh Logistics (FL)/AIC a project support grant amount of $350,000 for the period of March 25, 2021, to March 24, 2022 (12 months) as part of the bigger project titled “Demand Creation for Impact Scaling (DeCIS) for Orange -Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP) value chain in in Volta, Greater Accra, Ashanti, and Central regions of Ghana to improve food nutrition & security and livelihoods.
It was a one-year Job creation transformation programme funded by AGRA to support smallholder farmers to produce high quality Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato to support women/youth entrepreneurs to process OFSP products as well as improve nutrition & food security and livelihoods.
The project intended to achieve the following objectives:
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Increase OFSP productivity for smallholder farmers
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Strengthen and expand access to the output market
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Increase capacity of smallholder farming households and agricultural system to better prepare for and adapt to shocks and stresses under the DeCIS, facilitated Mobilization of Farmers for Contract Farming, built the capacity of farmers on Enterprise development, market facilitation and Private Sector Investment promotion.
- 570,000 vines delivered to two (2) seed companies.
- 1000 farmers registered in the Volta and Brong Ahafo region to produce OFSP roots.
- 70 bakers in the Volta region trained to use OFSP puree in bread production; 20 bakers were also trained in the Brong Ahafo region.
- 1 biscuit factory started a trial of using OFSP puree for biscuit production.
- Two screen houses (6m X 10m) and two irrigation systems of 2.5 acres were constructed.
- 3,160,000 vines delivered to 175 farmers.
- The inception meeting provided clarity on the status of development and further set out the working policies and standards expected from each consortium member in clear terms.
- Brought together different partners in this consortium to work jointly with each other and peer share expertise, knowledge and resource in order to give a better outlook to the project. This was to further help partners to confront and address challenges that affects farmers and other stakeholders across the OFSP value chain.
- The major concern of farmers was a reliable market for their produce. Most of them reported disappointments from the past projects. Due to this, a lot of assurances had to be made to secure their buy-ins for them to enroll unto the project. The procurement of the required vine cuttings from seed producer(s) was a daunting task. Advance identification and request notice needed to be submitted to the seed producers to ensure timely delivery of high-quality seeds.