Trade Minister said the event from November 7-8 will assess production, processing and consumption.

Cameroon will on November 7-8, 2012 play host to a national cocoa festival, an occasion to assess strides in production, local processing and consumption of the cash crop as well as seek ways of surmounting challenges that hamper the sector from ably occupying its pride of place position in the country’s economy.

Trade Minister, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, announced the event in a news briefing in Yaounde yesterday November 1 and said problems like poor drying of cocoa which greatly compromises quality highly needed in the international market, ageing farms and farmers and very little local consumption due to little local processing, absolutely need to be addressed so as to set the sector on the rails. “If we want to increase our production, it is also necessary to improve local processing and consumption,” the Minister said.

Organised by the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Board, the two-day festival to run simultaneously in Douala, Kumba, Mbalmayo, Mbangassina and Yaounde on the theme, “Quality, a market requirement,” will among others comprise open door days, international conferences, road shows and exhibition forum. Organisers say the festival will be an opportunity to celebrate the perseverance of producers in the phase of the crisis of the yesteryears and the contribution of the sector to the country’s economy, offer the public the opportunity to discover and taste cocoa finished products, attract the youth into the sector, strive to step up the level of local processing, inculcate best practices into producers as well as sell the vision of the interprofessional board to the public.

The national event, the brainchild of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries (COPAL) follows the organisation’s 75^th General Assembly, its 50^th anniversary celebration as well as the International Conference on Cocoa Research that held in Yaounde between October 8 – 20, 2012 and came up with wide-ranging resolutions to boost the sector and improve on the livelihood of its producers.