Road eases burden for Jiwaka farmers

BEFORE the opening of their new road, farmers in Kamdika, Jiwaka, like coffee grower Rachel Wane, faced the challenge of accessing markets.
“I’m a subsistence farmer for most things, but the cash crop is coffee,” Wane said.
“When there was no road here, we had to carry coffee to the highway to sell it.
“We had no access to anything – we couldn’t get to clinics if we were sick or if mothers needed to give birth and children had to walk all the way to the highway to get to school.”
However, these issues are now a thing of the past thanks to the new road which was part of the World Bank-supported Productive Partnerships in Agriculture Project (PPAP coffee component).
“Now with the new road we can sell coffee right from our doorstep,” Wane said.
“This has also opened new opportunities for us.”
PPAP is the country’s largest agricultural programme, supporting more than 68,000 cocoa and coffee producers around the country, including more than 24,000 women.