Background

Since 2021, WFP Ghana country office developed the Ghana Smallholder Farmers E-commerce Access (SFEA) initiative with support from WFP strategic partnership division (STR), 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 the 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.

The first workshop, Workshop on Innovative Smallholder Market Access, was held on 18 October 2022. It shared experience and practice of innovative approaches, grain bank mainly, to support smallholder market access. Measures and initiatives in Ghana contributing to smallholder market access were also introduced through this workshop. The post-survey was circulated after the workshop for collecting feedbacks to tailor project activities better. The post-survey analysis of the first workshop was rated very good with a rating of 4+ out of 5. Specifically, all the participants indicated that the knowledge obtained was very relevant and were willing to share this knowledge with various actors and stakeholders. On the proposed next workshop themed on digitalized smallholder market access, 85.7 percent expressed interest in the e-trading platform and digitalised platforms.

Objective

This Workshop on Digitalized Smallholder Market Access aims to share and exchange China and Ghana’s experience and practice on grain e-trading platform including digitalized approaches and tools to strengthen the smallholder market access.

Specifically, the Workshop will mainly focus on

· Opportunities and challenges analysis for grain e-trading platform in Ghana

· China’s practice on e-trading platform and digitalized applications

Event Arrangement

The Workshop on Digitalized Smallholder Market Access was held on May 5.

Targeted Audience

The workshop is targeting 60 participants from Ghana’s government institutions, NGOs and the private sector as well as potential beneficiaries. WFP colleagues are most welcome to join both events.

Organization

These Workshops was under the MARA-WFP SSTC Field Pilot in Ghana and was co-organised by WFP Ghana Country Office and China COE.

Agenda

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