Over 501 Producers embrace new Agric portal

Cameroon’s agro pastoral sector’s website has revealed that more than 501 producers around the country have embraced the new agricultural portal.

Thus first time visitors on the www.camagro.cm website will feel impressed. The homepage of the website welcomes visitors with tit-bits from the market, prices of some food stuff as well as Common Initiative Groups and associations involved in agricultural production.

The web portal belongs to the Ministry of Trade and the Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel). It has been segmented to ensure better visibility and understanding of offers.

The first part of the page indicates the price of a kilogramme of meat without bones at FCFA 2,795 in the Centre Region, FCFA 2,700 in the East, FCFA 2,800 in the Littoral, FCFA 2,200 in the North, FCFA 2,500 in the West and FCFA 2,700 in the South West Regions.

The prices are a bit cheaper for meat with bones in the same regions. The portal also offers consumers the opportunity to compare the prices of beans in the Centre, South, East and South West Regions. The prices of maize in the North and North West Regions as well as those of millet in the North Region also feature on the home page of the website.

The price table is followed by latest offers and announcements and how to get products like soya beans, fruits and vegetables, fresh fish, mushroom as well as table birds. As at August 13, 2015, 501 Common Initiative Groups and associations had taken space on the website, offering their goods and services to potential buyers.

The portal connects consumers, financial institutions, manufacturers and donors to producers. The latest to register on the website were the Modern Poultry Farm in Meyomessala in the South Region, the Slaughter and Saucerie House in Douala in the Littoral and the Poultry Complex in Mvog Betsi in Yaounde, Centre Region.

Ensuring interconnectivity between producers and buyers and promoting intercommunity communication is already visible on the website with special slots in place.

Since it began operations in May 2015, camagro is a “veritable revolution” as described by its promoters, offering a platform to sell the country’s agricultural potentials from the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Common Initiative Groups and cooperatives involved in the production, processing, marketing and export of wood, banana, maize, rubber, sugar, cocoa, plantain, livestock, sugar cane, Irish potatoes, cassava, fruits and honey among others, are in strong competition, offering their goods to interested visitors.

Technicians of Camtel have been put at the disposal to assist producers, cooperatives and CIG wishing to register and sell their goods through the website. They are working to facilitate access to the website by producers even in the suburbs through Short Message Services (sms) with the technical team of Camtel.

The technical team collects, processes and disseminates information from various departments of the Ministry of Trade. Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, Minister of Trade, and David Nkoto Emane, General Manager of Camtel, signed an agreement recently for the project.