JAMERA

The village of Jamera is the cultural heart of the Nafana tribe. Swirling with red dust during the dry season and lush with jungle greenery during the rainy season, it is a rural farming village that upholds longstanding tribal customs dating back to ancient times. The Nafana people speak a tonal Senufo language known as Nafaanra.

Like most rural Ghanaians, they maintain subsistence farms for their families, raise farm animals if they can, and hunt and trap bush meat. Most of the folks here are cashew farmers, selling cashew nuts as a cash crop. Approximately, some 460 cashew farms reside in the Jamera township with an estimated production capacity culminating to about 28% of cashew production in the Jaman North District (42,000MT).

PROJECT IN JAMERA

Located some 9km North East from Sampa, Jamera is bonded to the North by the Bonakire township, east by Duadaso No.2, to the west by Mow township and lastly to the south by Kabile. Among neighbouring towns, Jamera is the hub to cashew production.

For our project, after months of various researches, a pilot needed to be carried out to ascertain certain economic fundamentals of the business and also the postharvest situation in the area. We needed to be on the grounds to understand the needs of the farmers and why the cashew apples were left to rot in farms sites and landfills. In view of this, Jamera was the location to pilot test OASAL’s idea of synthesizing industrial ethanol from the cashew apple waste. Currently, Jamera houses a mini production facility stuffed with 2 de-nutting machines, screw presses as well as 2 3mm stainless steel boilers and animal feed grinder. As at March 2023, OASAL had mapped out over 68 farmers in Jamera whose production totaled about 800acres of cashew farm plantation and processed close to 48.8tons of cashew apple waste.