Inclusive supply chain development; key succes factors...

Just back from a week in West Africa. There is a lot of discussion on how to improve supply chains, how to improve sustainability and it is always amazing how little is known on the key succes factors.

In the past couple of years more companies have become interested in captive supply chains and there is also a lot of interest from the NGO and funding agencies to get involved in economic development or supply chain development.
Companies are operating with the perspective that everything can be done by just making agreements and set the rules for supply... NGO and funding agencies by majority think in 'technical' partial solutions; you just link the actors or if the production is the problem; you just start planting trees, without questioning why the actors never co-operated before succesfully or the farmers did not plant themselves earlier,

It is our experience in the past, successes on supply chain development are hardly the technical solutions as such, the production improvement, the organizational issues or the certificatons to be the key factors for succes. These are merely necessary conditions to make it work.
The key succes factors is in the coaching and mediation that needs to be done when the supply chain starts moving for the first few times. The majority of the actors never worked with each other before and have to adjust their attitude towards each other. In spite of all written agreements in the preparation, every actor, from farmers to traders will go back to their traditional role in now time.

An essential part of our work is to mediate in conflicts in a very pro active way; monitore progress during the harvest in buying, analyze where improvement is needed and to be 24/7 available in case of conflict with the attitude to solve...

Problem is there are a very limited number of people who have the skills; who know where we have to move, speak the language of both the traders as well as the producers and are creative in solution finding...

In the preparation of the upcoming harvest in cashew we could already identify within the team the possible conflicts that wil definitely happen; farmers that just want to discuss prices, traders that have to start explaining their markets to their suppliers...
It was already obvious we are going to have an interesting harvest season in west Africa...

I'm already looking forward to it. Our team is ready! Lets move and more then 15.000 cashew producers connected. to african processors and finally to the retail...

Herman uit de Bosch