PIERI-20367 Business Training and Awareness Campaign for the M-CADJU Service

Abstract

With raw cashew nuts exports accounting for 25% of the GDP and over 90% of Guinea-Bissau’s exports, cashew nuts production represents over 40% of annual income for over half of the country’s population. Recent studies have shown that the farmgate price, at which producers sell their raw cashew nuts, is a critical variable with a huge impact on the country’s GDP growth. Disperse ownership of small and medium cashew plantations across the population makes the impact of farmgate prices on poverty levels even larger. The increased variability of international raw cashew nuts prices in recent years has introduced an important source of inefficiency in this market: accurate information about short-term fluctuations in prices rarely reaches producers. This implies that farmers frequently end up selling their cashew nuts at a much lower price than they could, were they to be well informed. Aware of this problem, a live-fair-price mobile phone information service called M-CADJU was launched in 2018. However, apparently, lack of promotion for this initiative has resulted in a very low take-up. We propose an intervention with three different treatments: the promotion of this policy, a brief business, financial and agricultural training, and the combination of both. An improved understanding of market dynamics, combined with better information, should improve farmers’ awareness of feasible prices, improving their capacity to negotiate better deals for their production. Our experimental design will allow us to separate the effect of having a better financial and market understanding from that of improved access to prices information.

Members

Project leader: Adewusi Mendonça

Scientific mentors: Marcos Agurto

Journal publication

No journal publications.

Working Papers

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Policy Note: Economic downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic among cashew-growing communities in rural Guinea-Bissau	2023-01-27	723.22kB	0	0
	Impact of Market Information on Cashew Producers in Guinea-Bissau	2022-01-13	9.21MB	0	0

Policy Briefs

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Market information voice messages increase revenues for Guinea-Bissau’s cashew producers	2021-10-29	556.09kB	0	0
	Assessing options to reduce information asymmetry and improve income in the cashew sector in Guinea-Bissau	2024-10-25	1.79MB	0	0

Final report

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Impact of market information on cashew nut producers in Guinea Bissau	2024-12-06	2.38MB	0	0

Proposal

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Disseminating market information via mobile phones to cashew producers: an impact evaluation in Guinea-Bissau	2024-12-06	201.05kB	0	0