Guinea-Bissau: Cashew Nuts
Guinea-Bissau’s number one export to the world is raw cashew nuts (India buys the bulk of it). The entire country is seemingly planted with cashew trees and the really bad roads are clogged with truck loon trucks carried sacks of cashews to the Bissau port. The numbers are quite staggering – cashew nuts represent over 90% of the country’s total exports and contribute significantly to its GDP, the cashew industry supports more than 80% of the population, making it the number one economic activity for the nation by far. In 2022, Guinea-Bissau exported around 130,000 tons of cashew nuts to India, Vietnam, China, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. The cashew industry in Guinea-Bissau is driven by small-scale farmers who collect the nuts and sell to larger buyers. Cashew trees are everywhere here, brought by the Portuguese from Brasil. While many know how the nuts look like, not many people have seen the actual cashew fruits aka cashew apples – bright yellow and red fruits with a bizarre-looking attachments on the top, which is the actual nut in a double shell (the shell is actually quite toxic to touch, like poison ivy). The fruits are edible and very juicy and locals make cashew alcoholic drinks from it (and in Brasil it’s what cachaca is made from). Needles to say, we ate a lot!
