By Olimatou Coker
In a bid to promote local businesses, The Gambia Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Employers’ Association has on Saturday organized its first ever green market fair. The two days fair is purely centered on made in Gambia farm produce, agro processing, livestock, seafoods and fresh vegetables.
The fair commenced on Friday and was held at the GCCI Trade Fair Grounds in Brusubi.
It brought together GCCI members engaged in Gambia local farm produce, agro processing, livestock, sea fruits and fresh vegetables.
Ajie Sally Sagnia, the senior operation and membership officer at GCCI, spoke on the concept behind farmers market access.
She said access to markets is a problem in the Gambia. ”So it’s organized to create access to markets for farmers and the middlemen. As you can see we have processes. We have farmers that are here to sell their produce because it was requested by them that we organize something like this and it is the first time in the Gambia that it’s holding. So we deemed it necessary to organize something for the farmers and also it’s the Christmas period. People will be needing their produce to shop. So we decided to organize a small farmers market for Gambians,” she explained.
Ya Awa Faal, the president of Breeders Association, commented GCCI for conceiving the idea and asked for many more like this.
She called on the government to give more support to empower more women to venture into this trade as a source of income.
He added that among the challenges they face is lack of access to finance, which drives many more women from venturing into breeding.
Wally Saine, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Applied Research Innovative and Manufacturing that manufactures food processing, like many Wally was trained by GCCI and four years on he shares how the training has impacted him.
“The training opened up my mind to business all because I started engineering, so I had no idea about business then. The training helped me to be able to know the strategies that have expanded my business and also the market aspect of it, and also reaching out to the customers and so on.”
