Agribusiness: Need For Local Processing Emphasized

 Discussion on ways to make SMEs more performant was the focus of the first edition of The African Chamber of Trade and Commerce (ACC) Economic Day.

The need to encourage local processing of food by making small and medium sized enterprises more performant has come under focus at the first edition of The African Chamber of Trade and Commerce (ACC) Economic Day.

The event which took place in Yaounde, Monday November 20, 2017, was staged under the theme: “Quality performance, production and competitiveness of local products and services in the agro-industry and related manufacturing industries.”

While delivering a keynote address at the opening of the ACC Economic Day, Govannie Biha, Deputy Executive Secretary of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa disclosed that the central African sub-region spends about FCFA 2 billion yearly on food importation. She said foreign currency is being spent to purchase goods which can be produced locally.

 According to Govannie Biha, should local transformation be valorized, it will scale up agricultural production. “There is the possibility of transforming these productions to a whole value chain,” she suggested.

The Deputy Executive Secretary is confident that the opportunities are there and that the African continent has a ready market, but she holds that; “we have to make sure that there is coherence and link between policies for small and medium sized enterprises and trade policies.”

To Mary Concilia Anchang, Founding President of ACC, “Agribusiness is strategic. Ownership, knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing are key comp...