CARE Ghana and Cargill Hand Over Agro-Processing Equipment to Women Producer Groups in Ashanti and Central Regions

CARE Ghana, through its PROSPER III project with funding from Cargill, has handed over Agro-processing equipment to women producer groups in five cocoa-growing communities across the Ashanti and Central Regions. The handover event, held at Kufuor Camp in the Atwima Mponua District on June 17, 2025, reflected CARE’s commitment to empowering rural women and improving food security through inclusive market access and access to productive resource.

The equipment distributed included three rice threshers, ten tarpaulins, five weighing scales and three motorized tricycles to support the rice-processing in 3 communities – Kufuor Camp, Pasoro and KD Sreso – at the Atwima Mponua District. An earlier handover event held on 29th and 30th April involved cassava processing machines and tricycles for women gari processing groups at Tonkoase and Ayibo in the Adansi South and Assin South respectively.

This equipment support follows a recent market assessment by PROSPER III, which highlighted the lack of modern tools as a key barrier to growth and income diversification in local commodity value chains, particularly the rice and cassava value chain.

Present at the event were the Cargill Sustainability Manager, Samuel Apana, Cargill Sustainability Coordinator, Joshua Quansah, Ashanti Regional Director for Ministry of Food and Agriculture – MoFA, Mr. Godfrey Appiah Acheampong, Atwima Mponua District Coordinating Director, Mr. Samuel K Gyan, CARE Ghana Head of Programs, Zakaria Yakubu, Programme team leader, Mercy Sika Krow, traditional leaders, women producer groups and community members.

Speaking at the event, the Cargill Sustainability Operations Manager, Samuel Apana, highlighted the importance of empowering the woman in the family. He said, “this event is a very important one as Cargill believes that empowering women is one of the effective ways to ensure more financial securities for family expenses provide women the voice for decision making in their homes.”

Zakaria Yakubu, CARE Ghana’s Head of Programs in his remarks urged the women strengthen their cooperatives, “I will encourage you to form stronger cooperatives that are good representatives of farmers to engage better with government agencies and other organizations.” He added that the equipment is one of the ways to increase their productivity and strengthen their producer groups.

Mr. Godfrey Appiah Acheampong, the Ashanti Regional Director of MoFA encouraged the women to adopt a good maintenance culture. He stated, I will encouraged the women to practice good maintenance and to sustain the machines provided.

With the provision of these Agro-processing tools, women in these communities are now better positioned to increase productivity and improve incomes.

About PROSPER III

The Promoting a Sustainable and Food Secured World (PROSPER) project in Ghana was launched in 2016 by Cargill and CARE to strengthen inclusive governance, enhance women’s participation in decision making processes, improve food and nutrition security and improve access to education and child protection. The project has been run in two phases with the current phase being PROSPER III. PROSPER III has an overall goal of improving food security and gender equality in cocoa growing communities. PROSPER III is targeting a total of 360,200 people in 265 communities across 15 districts in the Western North, Ashanti, and Central Regions. The project has currently reached a total of 77,301 project participants with 69% female.

About CARE International

CARE International is a global humanitarian and development organization working to end poverty and deliver lifesaving support in emergencies. In Ghana, CARE has operated since 1994, focusing on women and girls, climate resilience, agriculture, and inclusive governance. To learn more, visit http://www.care.org

About Cargill

Cargill provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services to the world. Together with farmers, customers, governments and communities, we help people thrive by applying our insights and 153 years of experience. We have 155,000 employees in 70 countries who are committed to feeding the world in a responsible way, reducing environmental impact and improving the communities where we live and work. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center.

About Cargill in Ghana

Cargill has been buying cocoa from Ghana for over 40 years and in 2008 opened its state-of-the-art cocoa processing facility in Tema. Today the company has over 400 permanent and contracted employees processing cocoa products to service food and confectionary customers locally and around the world. Additionally, our animal nutrition business provides aqua feed which is supporting Ghana’s tilapia fish industry. In 2016 we added a licensed buying company (LBC). Our LBC operations bring innovative ways to trade with our farmers, placing emphasis on our sustainability and traceability efforts and build on our long-term commitment to the country and our relationship with the government.