Morocco’s OCP helps Côte d’Ivoire enhance farming competitiveness

Morocco’s Phosphates (OCP) will help Côte d’Ivoire enhance agricultural competitiveness and strengthen the impact of local development policies on rural populations.

To this end, the two sides signed Monday in Abidjan a framework agreement relating to the development of a strategic partnership between them.

this strategic partnership agreement, covering an initial period of two years, provides for the implementation on the ground of three specific agreements, including the rice project in the north of the country, the creation of 30 new generation agricultural service centres and the digital mapping of soil fertility.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Adjoumani Kouassi, said during the signing ceremony that the structural transformation of Ivorian farming will lead to an increase in agricultural productivity and farm incomes from 60% to 80% by 2030. This will also increase the value added and contribute to the creation of a significant number of jobs for the country’s youth and women.

Director General of OCP Africa, an OCP Group subsidiary, Mohamed Anouar Jamali, announced that two other specific agreements will follow, to spread good practices within women’s cooperatives and to establish a mechanism to accompany and support Ivorian start-ups investing in agribusiness.

OCP Africa is working on the training of excellence of young people in agribusiness and agri-tech through the establishment of a “digital farmer school” backed by an experimental farm.

“This school which will be the first core of the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Côte d’Ivoire will be the subject of a sixth specific agreement,” Jamali said.

The signing ceremony was chaired by Ivorian PM Patrick Achi.