Cameroun’s Agro–Hub wins Nestle Creating Shared Value Prize 2016


 Nestle Central and West Africa Region (CWAR) on Tuesday announced Agro-Hub from Cameroun as the winner of its 2016 Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize.
A Nestle CWAR statement said that Paul Bulcke, Nestle’s CEO, presented the CHF 300,000 prize to Agro-Hub at the Creating Shared Value Global Forum 2016 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
Agro-Hub merited the prize based on its contributions toward enhancing the livelihood of Africans in Cameroun and beyond.
The statement quoted Kais Marzouki, Market Head for Nestle CWAR as saying: ``Agro-Hub has successfully linked smallholder cassava farmers to markets, providing them with opportunities to generate significant and sustainable income.
``We are proud that the winner of this year’s prize is from our region and will continue to enhance the livelihood of Africans in Cameroun and beyond,’’ it quoted Marzouki as saying.
Agro-Hub, an agricultural production and marketing agency based in the South-West of Cameroun, is working to help small-scale farmers to gain access to sustainable markets.
It has built a small, integrated factory to transform cassava into starch and ``garri’’, a type of tapioca and sell it to its network of consumers through its fresh food store, Agro-Mart.
The statement said that Natural Extracts Industries, a social enterprise from Tanzania, was the runner-up; it received CHF 200,000 for pioneering the sustainable extraction of vanilla in Tanzania.
According to the statement, the two finalists were selected from a group of 450 applicants by the Nestle CSV Council, along with nine independent experts as well as nine Nestle internal experts.
This is the fourth time that Nestle has awarded the CSV prize.
The company will be opening the application process for the next competition in 2017.
``It will look out for innovative businesses or social enterprises in the areas of nutrition, water and rural development. 

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