Mbangassina: Cocoa farmers smile over new coalition for better outputs

By Nde Laura

Inhabitants of Mbangassina, a locality in the Mbam and Kim division, Centre region, with over 60,000 persons generate their income from cocoa productivity. The soil is rich but the conditions for crops to grow and be sold are a nightmare in this locality.

Although 70% of households’ incomes come from cocoa, the population faces issues of inaccessible roads, low productivity due to poor farming organizations, and poor market access which leads to low-income earning.

“ We have been doing cocoa we never knew how to sell them, I have more than two hectares of cocoa farms. We now sell FCFA 1200  per kilo of cocoa when we are in a group but before we grouped ourselves we sued to sell 1kg of cocoa from FCFA 550 to 700. It was terrible, also, we could not get to the markets due to bad roads from the farm, we have been also ignorant of the techniques used in getting a big harvest,” Mbonde Christy, a farmer told CNA.

This way of life has been going on for a long time until stakeholders from the public and private sectors together with civil societies decided to take action by signing a coalition agreement with the local authorities and population of Mbangassina.

This historic event took place at the village town hall on December 2, 2022.

The initiative will see the implementation of three pillar approaches namely; sustainable production, environmental protection, and social and economic inclusion of local communities.

CNA gathered that the coalition was initiated by the Sustainable Trade Initiative, IDH, a social enterprise that works with businesses, governments, and civil societies to correlate and dominate inclusive and sustainable solutions.

According to initiators, the multi-stakeholder initiative aims at establishing a framework for collaboration between the various actors to mobilize the technical and financial resources necessary to promote actions that will contribute to the sustainable development of the Mbangassina community by 2030.

According to the project Manager of IDH, Joel Atangana, the institution has also established the Green Commodity Landscape Program (GCLP), aiming at bringing together various stakeholders at the community level, to co-define and implements jointly, action plans that will contribute to the protection of forests, sustainable production, and improvement of livelihoods for farmers and local communities

Speaking during the event, the Mayor of Mbangassina, Mboene Bernard said that the project dubbed “cocoa without deforestation initiative” by IDH will improve the living conditions of the population, quality of outputs, and prices.

  “I  am proud today that for two years that we have been working with IDH, this has been the debt of intention that we have signed. The municipality will set up projects, we do research at the local level, and at the external level, IDH will come in as a donor to sponsor the projects. This is a great opportunity for us as a community, with the IDH approach, one who cultivates two hectares of cocoa farms will have the same yields as someone who has 10 hectares of farm,” he assured farmers.

For the farmers, this coalition with IDH will help them get better outputs and this will go a long way to ameliorate their living conditions.

“ I am certain that we are going to produce a great quantity of cocoa with the coming of IDH, some groups are already undergoing training from them, I am assured that the assistance from them will help us increase revenue and gain skills,” cocoa farmer, Belibe Marieliouse said.