Agriculture Sector Support Project

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The objective of the Agriculture Sector Support Project is to improve smallholder access to technologies and markets in Côte d’Ivoire for the enhancement and governance of selected value chains, which are cocoa, rubber, palm oil, cotton, and cashew. Côte d’Ivoire has built its economic foundation on agriculture, which currently accounts for 22 percent of GDP. This project focuses on the following geographical areas of production: the southwest around the Nawa region for cocoa, the southeastern regions of Sud Comoe and la Mé for rubber and oil palm, the central and northern regions of Hambol and Gontougo for cashew nuts, and the northern regions for cotton. Project activities are clustered around three technical components, combining value chains and geographic areas to facilitate implementation. The first component promotes a public-private partnership for sustainable cocoa development in southwest Côte d’Ivoire. The second component supports the expansion and renewal of village plantations of oil palm and rubber in southeast Côte d’Ivoire. The third component supports the cotton sector and promotion of cashew processing in central and northern Côte d’Ivoire. Each of the three components is similarly structured with three sub-components, namely improving access to markets, improving productivity in a sustainable way, and introducing institutional development to the value chain. A fourth general component deals with coordination of project activities between the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and the National Investment Program (NIAP).