With an annual cashew export earning averaging US$350 million, Cashew Watch Ghana (CWG), a civil society organization, asserts that Ghana has not fully tapped into the US$7 billion global cashew market potential.
CWG deems the current earnings as suboptimal, emphasizing that the country could generate over US$660 million by capitalizing on the economic tree’s global prospects through increased production, value addition, and exports.
The 2020 cashew export earnings of US$340 million, according to CWG, should serve as a starting point to unlock the sector’s full potential.
With an estimated annual production of 110,000 to 130,000 tonnes of raw cashew nuts, CWG advocates for intensified efforts to enhance production, storage, and value addition, asserting that the sector could significantly contribute to job creation and poverty reduction.
Globally, the market size of cashew nuts currently stands at around US$7 billion, projected to reach US$10.5 billion by 2031, according to CWG.
Despite being one of the country’s top non-traditional export commodities in the past five years, the cashew sector faces challenges, including low production volumes, poor value chain coordination, and inadequate support.
While there are 14 cashew processing factories nationwide, many operate undercapacity or have shut down due to a lack of raw cashew nuts.
Despite the benefits from cashew value chain exports, such as earnings from raw nuts, there are substantial untapped opportunities in the cashew processing sub-sector, which offers various products such as snacks, food ingredients, cashew milk, and biofuel, among others.
However, challenges like labor costs, quality control, energy costs, logistics, and price fluctuations hinder the full potential of the profitable cashew processing sub-sector.