In recent years the cashew sector has become increasingly important in West Africa, including Ghana. In Ghana, the majority of cashew nuts are produced by smallholder farmers, and around 90% are exported to Asia unprocessed, which way the country leaves much potential unexploited. The project "Market-oriented value chains for jobs and growth in the ECOWAS region" (MOVE), implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), wants to change this situation and aims to create income and employment opportunities along market-oriented and resilient value chains.

In April/March 2025 the AVE research project conducted a qualitative study to examine the gender impacts of MOVE. The cashew value chain is a good choice for promoting gender equality because, on the one hand, it offers many employment opportunities – especially for women – thanks to its many upstream and downstream sectors and a relatively wide range of products that can be made from cashews. On the other hand, a large number of women are already employed in the value chain as self-employed, mostly small and micro-entrepreneurs, as well as employees and workers, which offers good starting points for promotion.

MOVE works primarily to improve the capacity of public and private partner organisations, which in turn are often in direct contact with the target group of farmers or small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. MOVE supports its partners with revising or newly developing, institutionalising and disseminating the innovative training and further education programmes necessary to achieve the project objectives. For the training courses funded by the project, MOVE has required its partners to allow at least 50% of women to participate. The training courses themselves encourage and empower participants to consider gender equality in the value chain and to initiate solutions within their own environment.

In the course of field research, former participants were interviewed who, for example, offer childcare for employed mothers in their businesses and also talk to the fathers and husbands of these women, to convince them of the advantages of women's employment. Another participant in northern Ghana successfully campaigned for women's right to own land and cultivate cashews. After the training a number of participants set up their own businesses to grow and graft cashew seedlings or to process cashew apples. The latter are usually considered waste by farmers. MOVE wants to change this and promotes the processing of vitamin C-rich cashew apples into juice, jam and other products.

The promotion of the cashew value chain creates numerous jobs. For example, each small (micro-) business included in the study employed three to five (mostly) women, albeit informally. The women earn their own income, which they can spend as they see fit. In addition to household expenses and schooling for children, it is often invested in the business or other income-generating activities in order to diversify sources of income and supplement the seasonal income from cashews throughout the year. Earning their own income often goes hand in hand with greater decision-making power and higher status within the family and often also in the community. Their influence in the community is further increased when several women join together to form a group and, in this capacity, approach the authorities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Churches or the village chief to obtain financial support, premises or land.

In general, it is difficult for women to obtain the financial resources to start or expand a business or to cultivate a cashew plantation, which requires seedlings, labour and other expenses. Interest rates on loans are quite high in Ghana and the terms are unsuitable, especially for agricultural businesses. The savings and credit facilities offered by informal savings and credit groups are generally too small for such expenses. We therefore recommend that MOVE provides participants in its training courses with start-up capital in the form of a revolving fund and upon presentation of a well-developed business plan.

To further promote the processing of cashew apples, it may be helpful to emphasise the economic viability of this activity. Calculations made in the course of this field research based on information from producers showed that, with a typical area of up to two acres of cashew trees for women, it is comparatively more lucrative to process cashew apples and market the products than to sell the unprocessed nuts.

Although the project can be credited with empowering women and demonstrating a high degree of gender sensitivity, the gender-transformative effects of MOVE can only be initiated or achieved selectively through its training courses. However, MOVE is networked with numerous partner organisations in the governmental, NGO and private sectors and is thus able to achieve gender-transformative effects in a systematic and comprehensive manner through these institutions, some of which are trend-setting.