Chairperson of TIAST Group West Africa, Lisa Hao, has indicated the preparedness of the Group to support Ghanaian women to excel in cassava processing in the country.
According to her, over 2,000 industries can be formed in the country with the cassava cash crop, indicating that Ghanaian women must reap the full economic benefit from the venture.
She disclosed that the TIAST Group is poised to building a processing company for the commodity in Ghana.
Ms. Hao made the disclosure in a goodwill message delivered at TIAST Group’s Fourth Agricultural Industrializaon Conference in Accra on the theme: “Empowering Women through Financial & Technological Support for Cassava Processing.”
The TIAST Group’s West Africa Chairperson stated “with the cooperation between the TIAST Group and Stanbic Bank, we pledge to push the development of the cassava industry realization in Ghana.”
This she said would enable stakeholders in the sector get more support and the benefits in all the varieties of the crop.
She indicated that TIAST Group has more than 2,000 ways to transform cassava starch into cash because cassava starch can be used to form more than 2,000 industries in China according to the market demand.
Ms Hao for this reason urged more Ghanaian women to join the cassava processing business assuring that wealth would be created by processing the comoditys.
Abdul Jaleel Hussein, Head of Commercial Banking of Stanbic said women do all the tedious work on the farms but do not reap the full benefits of their labour.
He said there is the great need to rally around women to reverse the disproportionate trend stressing that Stanbic Bank’s partnership with TIAST Group is to challenge the stereotypes against women.
Mr. Hussein said it is impossible to achieve the expected growth in Africa and Ghana in particular without agriculture.
Ms. Paulina S. Addy, Director of the Women in Agricultural Development Directorate at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) said cassava has changed overtime from being the poor man’s crop to an industrialized crop.
She said there are a myriad of textile industries that depend heavily on starch, the reason Ghana must not look on for starch to be imported into the country.
Ms. Addy noted the Ministry has collaborated with its allied agencies and other stakeholders to improve on cassava for starch and for high quality cassava flour, a venture Ghana is not doing too well because of the lack of requisite equipment to get it to its high quality state.
Hon. Akua Afriyie, a Business Woman and Former MP for Ablekuma North said women farmers are limited in respect of access to resources.
She said women less benefit from profitable activities along agricultural value chains compared to their male counterparts.
Hon. Afriyie averred that African women play a central role in the continent’s agricultural sector as the backbone of the sector adding that “they represent 52 per cent of the total population in the sector and are responsible for approximately 50 per cent of agricultural labour on farms.”
Irene Sackey, the Business Development Supervisor at TIAST West Africa said it is sad that for years women have been marginalized in many areas.
With particular reference to agriculture, she maintained that women mostly engage in small scale farming due to some challenges, and it is high such challenges are confronted head-on.
This Ms. Sackey stated has been compounded by the problem of inadequate technology to boost production.
“In many parts of the country, it will amaze you to find that we are all farming in the traditional way, producing and selling our fresh tomatoes, cassava, yam and raw products when we can make so much money selling processed goods like cassava starch, tomato paste which can generate more revenue.
Source: Kofi Yirenkyi
