Local entrepreneurs turn waste from cashew harvests into a new beverage industry for Benin.

Local entrepreneurs turn waste from cashew harvests into a new beverage industry for Benin. TechnoServe is working with local entrepreneurs to turn waste from cashew harvests into a new beverage industry for Benin, and a more prosperous future for Africa’s cashew-producing countries. A cashew harvest is a colorful affair. The nuts are ready for picking when the cashew apple – really the swollen stalk it grows from – is a vibrant red or pink. On the farm, the nut is removed from the ripe fruit, dried, and sent for processing before being shipped around the globe to become the delicious and nutritious snack we all know. Although cashew is mainly a cash crop in Africa – the second largest behind cocoa – the industry can be equally nutritive for the countries that produce it, offering great potential to improve rural livelihoods as well as provide employment opportunities through processing. In Benin, TechnoServe is working to innovate the sector through the BeninCajù project, which helps cashew processors to raise their production levels and connect with lucrative markets, while creating jobs in rural areas where unemployment is high. Over five years, this nearly $20 million project – a collaboration between TechnoServe, Catholic Relief Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – seeks to create close to 4,000 jobs in the cashew processing industry (70 percent of which are for women) and improve the incomes of almost 35,000 producers, representing a quarter of all cashew farmers in Benin. In Benin, local entrepreneurs are working with TechnoServe to create Sweet Benin, the country’s first cashew apple juice label. Sweet Benin represents the formation of the first formal industry for cashew by-products in the country, but initial successes are promising.