Swiss group Gebana Faso commissioned a new
cashew processing facility on June 6 in Péni, located in the Guiriko region in southwestern Burkina Faso.
According to local media reports, the plant forms part of an agro-industrial complex covering 7.2 hectares. Although the company has not disclosed the total investment cost, the facility has an annual processing capacity of 10,000 tonnes of raw cashew nuts.
The company plans to secure raw material supplies through a network of 7,200 local farmers. The new facility further expands processing capacity within Burkina Faso’s cashew sector. In December 2025, President Ibrahim Traoré inaugurated another cashew processing plant, Burkina Cajou, in Bobo-Dioulasso, also located in the same region.
Authorities said the facility required an investment of CFA9.74 billion ($17.4 million) and has an annual processing capacity of 150,000 tonnes, making it the largest cashew processing plant in the country. Against this backdrop, Gebana’s new factory could accelerate progress toward the government’s processing objectives.
The Interprofessional Cashew Committee of Burkina Faso (CIAB) aims to process 50% of the country’s cashew production domestically by 2033, compared with roughly 10% at present. Official statistics show that Burkina Faso produced an average of nearly 140,000 tonnes of cashew nuts annually between 2018 and 2022.
By comparison, independent agricultural consultancy N’kalô estimated in a market bulletin published on February 3, 2026, that the country processed only 15,400 tonnes of cashew nuts annually on average between 2021 and 2025.
Challenges Remain
As investment in Burkina Faso’s cashew-processing industry accelerates, manufacturers continue to focus on securing sufficient raw material supplies. Like most cashew-producing countries in West Africa, Burkina Faso has historically exported the majority of its cashew crop in raw form.
International market prices often remain more attractive for producers and traders than prices offered by domestic processors. In response, the Burkinabe government suspended raw cashew exports in March 2025 to ensure that local processors had adequate access to supplies.
Authorities lifted the restriction on May 20, 2025, after processing plants secured sufficient raw materials. However, the government stated that it reserves the right to reintroduce the export ban if domestic supply requirements are no longer met, in order to protect the local processing industry.
The alternating suspension and reopening of exports highlights the policy trade-offs facing Ouagadougou. The government must preserve farmer incomes while simultaneously supporting local processing activities that generate higher value addition within the sector.
Despite the country's relatively low processing rate, Burkina Faso’s cashew industry generated CFA67.5 billion in export revenue in 2024, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Demography (INSD).
