19/04/2011. Twenty women rice processors, mainly drawn from the Bolgatanga Municipality and Kassena-Nankana East District of the Upper East Region, have attended a three-day training workshop to broaden their knowledge on improved rice post-harvest technologies.The project under which the training was organised was dubbed,; "The project under which the training was organised was dubbed,; "Improving Post-Harvest Quality and Packaging of Rice, Sorghum/Millet and Cassava Products to enhance Marketability in West Africa."
It was as a result of an agreement signed in June 2009, between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain Pour La Recherche et Le Developpement Agricoles (CORAF) and the West and Central African Council for Agric Research and Development (WECARD), based in Senegal, to initiate six projects when there was a food crisis and the hiking food prices all over West Africa.
Project Target Countries
• Rice: Senegal, Mali, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria
• Sorghum/Millet: Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria
• Cassava: Ghana, Nigeria, Benin and Togo
These projects were to be undertaken under the framework of the Emergency Global Food Security Initiative, with the aim of seeking to mobilise the strengths, expertise and resources for post-harvest technology development and transfer in West Africa, to demonstrate appropriate post-harvest technologies for adoption.
During the training, the participants were taken through rice primary post-harvest operations such as harvesting, bulking, threshing, winnowing, and drying, while under the secondary post-harvest operations, storage, par-boiling, drying and milling were also discussed.
