Potato Entrepreneurship Project

Country: Pita, Guinea
Project details
Services:
Access to finance
Capacity building
Enterprise development
Value chain development
Crops:
Roots and tubers

Potato Entrepreneurship Project (PEP), 2020 - 2022

Donor: Belgian Cooperation / ENABEL

Goal 

The project’s goal is to support entrepreneurship and improve the performance of stakeholders in the potato value chain of the Mamou region of the Republic of Guinea.

What we do

Local potato production in West Africa is at a relatively low level which mainly meets local demand. Guinea has a comparative advantage in the sub-region: a large area of arable land in the Fouta Djallon has favorable climatic conditions for the production of Irish potatoes. However, the potato value chain is not well structured and stakeholders are lacking professionalism. EUCORD will take action to:

    1. Support the development of a framework for planning priority concerted actions
    2. Build technical and entrepreneurial capacities of all value chain actors
    3. Facilitate business relations between value chain actors
    4. Support the implementation of value chain concerted actions

The beneficiaries of the project will be mainly potato producers and their representative groups, as well as agro-entrepreneurs related to the provision of inputs, processing units or marketing activities.

Accomplishments

  • 40 model-farmers were trained on GAPS (potato production, seed multiplication, soil improvement, etc.) and demonstrations with selected model-farmers set up along with trainings
  • First trainings to entrepreneurs and elaboration of business plans started in January 2021
  • 21 entrepreneurs have developed a business plan and are preparing requests for funding to MFIs/ Banks
  • First value chain stakeholder meetings took place in February 2020