Background
Since 2021, WFP and Ghana have jointly initiated the Ghana Smallholder Farmers E-commerce Access (SFEA), which aims to accelerate impact from the Ghana government’s extensive investments into rural transformation, particularly agriculture, with a focus on digital innovation. The South-South Cooperation exchange is one important component of SFEA, which aims to facilitate capacity building at the institutional level in terms of e-commerce models and innovations, supporting the agricultural value chain sustainably and trade, access to inputs, information, credit, and other services with special interest to women and youth groups. The WFP-MARA SSTC Field Pilot in Ghana was proposed to support SFEA project activities, which aims to help mobilize the knowledge, expertise, technical support and technological solutions for the public sector institutions, private sector, experts and local communities, through the facilitation of South-South Cooperation with China and other relevant Southern providers.
In 2021, a Webinar on Improving Smallholder Farmers' Access to Markets and Financial Services was co-organised by WFP HQ's Strategic Partnership Division (STR) and WFP Ghana Country Office, with facilitation from WFP Centre of Excellence for Rural Transformation (WFP China COE). The endeavour looped in the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) and the National Food Buffer Stock Company, which are two important institutions involved in SFEA. The webinar strengthened the understanding on the specific needs of the different sectors in Ghana and explored how Chinese academic and corporate partners can support the SFEA. Based on the needs analysis for GCX, farmers’ capacity building and market information systems are to be invested, which will enable smallholder market access in Ghana.
Rationale
WFP China COE is dedicated to share China’s knowledge and expertise upon the demands from other developing countries. Value Chain Development for Smallholders and Post-harvest Loss Management and Food Systems are two of the thematic areas that China COE works in, which could contribute to strengthening the smallholder market access and improving the post-harvest management through South-South Cooperation. WFP China COE also leverages experiences and proven technologies for poverty reduction and rural transformation to broker South-South Cooperation activities across policy, technical and grass-root level.
In China, innovative and digitalized models, such as grain bank and e-trading platform, have been adopted to support the smallholder market access and better post-harvest management. The grain bank supports smallholders from grain storage, processing to financial service and many other activities. There are some large grain banks in Shandong, Henan, Heilongjiang, and other major grain-producing areas in China. E-trading platform is another model showcasing the informatized and digitalized grain storage to support smallholder market access. China has gained experience from the past decades in the above-mentioned models, which can be shared and exchanged with other developing countries.
In responding to the local needs from government and stakeholders in Ghana, WFP China COE in collaboration with Ghana Country Office will organize a Series of Workshops on Innovative and Digitalized Smallholder Market Access to improve the smallholder market access. Meanwhile, such exchanges will promote the technical exchange between China and Ghana under South-South Cooperation and thus will facilitate further collaboration between two countries.
Objective
A series of Workshops will be arranged under the theme of Innovative and Digitalized Smallholder Market Access.
Session I. Workshop on Innovative Smallholder Market Access
This Workshop aims to share China’s innovative model and pragmatic practice to support smallholders’ grain storage and processing, improving the smallholder market access and resilience against market risks.
Specifically, the Workshop will mainly focus on
· Innovative model of grain storage and processing to support smallholder market access
· Good field practice of post-harvest service to smallholders
Event Arrangement
Chinese/English/French simultaneous interpretation will be provided for both workshops.
A post-survey will be circulated to participants to identify areas for improvement.
The Workshops will feed the WFP-China South-South Cooperation Knowledge Sharing Platform and Cloud School.
