Background: Rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from lack the lack of economic opportunities and population displacement. As many other African countries, Togo is predominantly an agricultural country, with about four-fifths of the work force engaged in farming. Leading cash crops are coffee and cocoa, followed by cotton, palm kernels, copra, peanuts, and shea nuts (karité). Efforts are under way to develop improved variety to increase productivity and build up other ways of generating incomes for small rural communities. As part of this effort, the International Foundation for Global Community Development is collaborating to promote technological interventions that will optimize coffee productivity and developing new opportunities for local people.
Objective: Enable farmers to improve their productivity by adapting the crops to the lands and maximizing production; multiplying opportunities at the community level by introducing new technologies that will allow businesses development locally and therefore prevent population displacement.
Problem: Due to the current farming-oriented structure of the economy, Togo is facing an ineluctable loss of population, disappearance of the local customs and community cohesiveness in rural communities. Food and cash crop production employs the majority of the labor force and contributes about 40% to the gross domestic product (GDP). Coffee and cocoa are traditionally the major cash crops for export. Even if Togo reached the self-sufficiency objective that was set, the government's decade-long effort, supported by the World Bank and the IMF, to implement economic reform measures, encourage foreign investment, and bring revenues in line with expenditures has stalled. The NFGCD interventions:
- Improve cash crop farming, especially the culture of coffee, in the northern regions by adapting the crop to the land
- Develop cottage industries
- Bring solar energy technology to improve quality of life and serve as a new business opportunity
Partner institutions:
- Graham Knight, BioDesign http://biodesign.webeden.co.uk/
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.ornl.gov/