Over 40,000 entities and individuals in agro processing and cosmetics have benefited from the West Africa Competitiveness Programme by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation.

The support which includes quality of products and technical assistance on value addition aims at helping these beneficiary firms to get easy access to the international market.

Speaking to Journalists at the second Ghana International Cluster conference, which forms part of the initiative to showcase innovations of industrial clusters in the cosmetics, fruits and cassava value chain, Project Manager, Ebe Muschialli, hinted that the majority of the support has gone into quality standards.

“We have begun this initiative to help small and medium enterprises especially in agro-processing so they can enhance the quality of their products and meet the international quality standards of the European Union”.

“With this, we have also supported market access and productivity for some of them since the inception of the programme and I can tell you that about 42,000 smallholder firms have received a form of support, ranging from farmers, aggregators, processors and other dealers in the value chain” she disclosed.

The West Africa Competitiveness Programme, WACOMP was initiated to scale up agro-processing firms to enhance the quality of their products as well as gain access to international markets.

Chief Technical Advisor for the programme, Dr. Charles Kwame Sackey, explained the scope of work for the entire programme and how it benefited Ghanaian small and medium enterprises.

The conference was organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the European Union and the Ministry of Trade and Industries (MoTI) on the theme “Ghanaian Clusters, A Driving Force for the Economy”.