West Africa’s fifth Border Information Center has opened on the Noe-Elubo border between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Like the other Border Information Centers in the region, the center aims to increase cross-border trade by providing information and assistance to cross-border traders, and by advocating for improvements in transit procedures.

At the 2012 annual conference of the African Cashew Alliance, Kraft Foods and Intersnack, two of the world’s largest buyers of cashew nuts, signed an agreement with the alliance to implement a quality and sustainability seal to address those top concerns for buyers – and thereby make African processors’ cashews more competitive in world markets.

What a difference a year makes – three companies are now using the seal across Africa and eight more are being assessed to use it.

Burt’s Bees joins the Global Shea Alliance

The Global Shea Alliance has welcomed Burt’s Bees as its newest member, and the company will also participate in the Alliance’s working group on sustainability.

Since 2006, the USAID Trade Hub has implemented a methodology to collect data on road governance practices along primary trade corridors in West Africa. The West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) oversees the road governance initiative, which today involves eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

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Global Shea Alliance participates at in-cosmetics, trains women in Ghana

The Global Shea Alliance, co-founded by the USAID Trade Hub in 2011, participated at the In-Cosmetics international trade show and the Union for Ethical Bio Trade conference in Paris, distributing more than 100 annual reports and membership directories to shea butter distributers, brands, and development agencies from around the world.

Border Information Center opens at the Port of Dakar

105 stakeholders in Senegal participated in the launch of West Africa’s fourth Border Information Center in Dakar. The new center is hosted by the Conseil Sénégalais des Chargeurs (COSEC).

More than 500 representatives of all points in the shea value chain participated in the Global Shea Alliance’s “Global Perspectives” conference, held in Abuja, Nigeria, in March, and set the course for the future of an industry whose global significance grows with every year. Alliance members set up working groups on sustainability on the critical issues of quality and sustainability, and elected a new president.

In the 1990s, international handcrafts buyers included Côte d’Ivoire on their itineraries when they came to West Africa. But the country’s long civil war in the 2000s decimated that economic activity. Thanks to collaboration between the Ministry of Trade, the Côte d’Ivoire Export Promotion Agency (APEX-CI) and the USAID Trade Hub – supported by the USAID Business Environments for Agile Markets – buyers are returning.

Traveling in West Africa to source handcrafts and import those products is full of challenges. I don’t have to tell those who have been there, how difficult logistics alone can be as you attempt to uncover the artistic talent. That talent is abundant, but very difficult to find when you are on your own (and trying to work in your broken French!).