Olam Agri, IDH expand sustainable agriculture partnership across West Africa
Building on successful collaboration in West Africa, the renewed partnership will scale sustainable sourcing initiatives, strengthen market access for producers, and promote inclusive agricultural development in Ghana, Nigeria, and potentially other countries.
GHANA – Olam Agri and IDH (The Sustainable Trade Initiative) have signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to significantly expand their joint initiatives aimed at enhancing smallholder livelihoods, improving food supply chain resilience, and advancing climate-smart agricultural practices across global food and feed value chains.
The expanded agreement builds upon the organizations’ established working relationship in West Africa, merging Olam Agri’s global origination footprint, processing infrastructure, and market access with IDH’s expertise in building multi-stakeholder alliances and data-driven platforms.
Under the strategic framework, Olam Agri and IDH will design and execute customized, country-specific action plans focused on empowering farmers, workers, local agricultural enterprises, cooperatives, and rural communities.
A key highlight of the expanded alliance is a new targeted initiative launched in Ghana under IDH’s Women in Sourcing and Enterprise (WISE) program.
Designed to assist small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within sustainable supply chains, the Ghana project concentrates on strengthening local cultivation capacity for drought-resilient wheat varieties, opening broader market access, and empowering women bakers by creating inclusive economic opportunities throughout the processing and bakery sectors.
The Ghana launch builds directly on the success of Olam Agri and IDH’s ongoing project in Kwara State, Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the partnership currently supports approximately 5,000 soybean growers by delivering technical assistance in climate-smart agronomic practices, enhancing local market linkages, and establishing pathways toward commercially viable, climate-resilient farming systems.
Beyond wheat and soy value chains, the expanded collaborative framework targets several key operational areas, including farmer agronomic training, youth and women entrepreneurship, potential guaranteed crop offtake arrangements, local processing capacity building, landscape governance, and ecosystem restoration.
The strategic objective is to enable producers to transition toward regenerative agriculture while boosting local food security, job creation, and value addition in emerging agricultural markets.
Commenting on the partnership, Dr. Shailendra Mishra, Global Head of Sustainability for Food, Feed, and Freight at Olam Agri, emphasized that transforming agricultural supply chains at scale requires deep collaboration to tackle complex economic and environmental challenges.
IDH Chief Executive Officer Daan Wensing added that strengthening the connection between sustainable sourcing practices and rural livelihoods is essential to securing long-term global supply chains and building resilient production landscapes.
The two organizations also signaled ambitions beyond Ghana and Nigeria. Olam Agri and IDH intend to identify new food and feed projects across other African markets, with priority areas including equitable market access for farmers adopting regenerative agriculture, developing climate-resilient sourcing landscapes, eliminating deforestation from agricultural supply chains, strengthening local processing capacity, and improving data-driven decision-making across value chains.
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