In addition to being cultivated as a cash crop for the production of nuts, cashew has several other uses in the country. In addition to cocoa, cashew is another important commercial crop in Nigeria that has enormous export potential. Through their online platform, people now invest in cashew nuts with a guaranteed return of 20 percent on their investment. For the Ivory Coast economy, the cashew boom represents an unexpected but welcome opportunity to diversify agricultural exports beyond cacao beans and rubber.
However, to realize its full potential, Ivory Coast needs to process and add value to its raw cashew nuts. Tanzania is one of the largest producers of cashew nuts in Africa, and exports provide 10 to 15 percent of the country's foreign exchange. In the district of Zanzan, in northeastern Ivory Coast, one of the country's cashew nut producing regions, poverty levels remain among the highest in the country. The nationalization of cashew processing factories also contributed to the industry's serious challenges, as these government institutions were new and faced a steep learning curve in this respective industry.
He added that, with the spacing style used by the Hastom to plant their cashew nuts, the farm can intercrop soybeans and cassava for short-term benefits. It has become a prime commercial crop in Nigeria and is consumed and also serves as an industrial raw material in companies that produce chemicals, paints, varnishes, insecticides and fungicides, conductors of electricity and various types of oil. As the world's leading exporter of processed cashew nuts, India imports 50 to 60% of raw cashew nuts for processing from Africa and Asia. In just 10 years, from 1990 to 1999, cashew nut production went from approximately 29,000 tons to 120,000 tons.
The windfall could be even greater and stimulate a true cashew industry capable of competing with India and other cashew nut producers, such as Vietnam, in international markets. Commercial cultivation is usually cultivated in the southern coastal regions of the country, near the cities of Mtwara, Kilwa and Dar es Salaam. Tanzania's cashew production was first cultivated in the 1950s and agricultural production peaked in 1972.However, despite the promises, the cultivation of cashew nuts is maintained, the country has not yet fully exploited the potential of the harvest due to several factors. Two good things about cashew nuts are that their return on investment reaches 55 percent and their payback time is just 12 months, experts say.
The Tanzanian government has faced challenges in finding potential investors in order to revive the cashew processing industry in Tanzania.