(Togo First) – A new project to support Togo’s rice sector was launched on Monday, Dec 18, in Lomé. The initiative, OCOP-TOGO, is backed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 

“This project supports the government’s actions to bolster the rice sector. The Togolese State’s goal with this initiative is to ensure food and nutritional security for the Togolese people leveraging the local rice output, and have surpluses set aside for agricultural processing industries”, said Konlani Dindiogue, Director of Cabinet at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development.

The OCOP-TOGO project will cover zones with high rice production potential, implementing green technologies in these parts of the country. The project aims to help producers and rice parboiling cooperatives adopt green production, green processing, and green marketing while bolstering the capacities, technical and organizational, of players in the sector.

Togo is one of the 28 countries to benefit from the FAO initiative. The West African country was filtered through a call for applications entitled “One country one priority product.”

Commenting on Togo’s current performances in the rice sector, Cabinet Director Konlani Dindiogue said “We are currently about 70% dependent. In 2021, for example, the national production of milled rice was around 100,000 tonnes. We only cover 30% of needs. It is urgent to step up the government’s actions to achieve these objectives.”

For his part, Oyetunde Djiwa, FAO Program Director in Togo, revealed that “Togo wants to reverse the balance of trade in rice, which is imported in large quantities. And for the initiative underway in Togo, it is focusing on rice, supporting producers in sustainable rice production, identifying a few pilot sites where we demonstrate to producers how to improve their production techniques, and finding women on the sites who will process the rice, because today, parboiled rice is in high demand on the Togolese market.”

The pilot phase of the OCOP-TOGO is set to end in 2025.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Published Date: December 21, 2023