As part of its activities in the Savannah region of Togo, the West Africa Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) has acquired and distributed inputs to more than 500 producers, each of whom received 10 kilograms of rice seeds and 75 kilograms of fertilisers (NPK 15 15 15 and Urea) free of charge at subsidised cost, with repayment in kind (in paddy rice) at harvest. To make it easier for producers to monitor production, collect the rice harvest and market surplus production, an agreement has been signed with the Tône rice mill, an aggregator specialising in the collection, processing, and marketing of rice in the Savannah region.

Thanks to this agreement, the rice mill has had an encouraging impact, as its manager tells us: “Today, with the support of the FSRP, our area of intervention, which was limited to Barkoissi, now covers the entire Savannah region, as far as Kanté in the Kara region. We have gone from 1,700 producers to 16,800 producers, an increase that has had a considerable impact on the quantity of production, which has risen from 800 tonnes to 2,000 tonnes of paddy”, she told us, before continuing: “As for jobs, the rice mill has gone from 32 to 73 people. At the processing level, the number of jobs has risen from 12 to 23, and the number of women sorters from 20 to 50.

It should also be noted that, unlike in previous years, this year the Tône rice mill has not had recourse to bank credit, often at high interest rates, but has enough production to meet the demand for local rice on the national market throughout 2024. It plans to install mini-factories for pre-processing paddy in high-yield areas such as Gando, Takpamba and many other localities.