West Africa, Vietnam and Cambodia Are Rewriting the Cashew Map

For years, the global cashew trade ran on a simple script.

West Africa supplied the bulk of the raw cashew nuts. Vietnam and India imported those nuts, processed them at scale, and set kernel prices for the rest of the world. The money and the margins sat firmly in the midstream.

Between 2020 and 2025, that script changed.

West African governments started pushing aggressively for local value addition. Côte d’Ivoire built one of the most ambitious processing sectors in the world, Benin launched an export-ban experiment to feed a new industrial zone, Ghana tightened regulation instead of banning exports, and Nigeria focused on FX and quality rather than outright restrictions. At the same time, Vietnam quietly deepened its dependence on Cambodia, which has emerged as the world’s second-largest raw cashew producer and a dedicated supplier to Vietnamese processors.

The result is a more fragmented, more political, and more competitive cashew market than at any point in the last two decades.

This article walks through what has actually changed, and what it means if you’re buying, trading, or processing cashews.

 

West Africa: From Raw Supplier to Processing Bloc in the Making

West Africa’s weight in global supply

By 2023, West Africa was producing around 3 million tons of raw cashew nuts (Food Business Africa), about 57% of global output (ACA). Countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Ghana now anchor the world’s RCN supply.

For years, however, more than 80–90% of those nuts left the continent in raw form, mainly to Vietnam and India. That imbalance is exactly what regional policy is now trying to change.

Côte d’Ivoire: Africa’s processing benchmark

Côte d’Ivoire has built the most comprehensive cashew policy framework on the continent:

• A dedicated regulator, Conseil du Coton et de l’Anacarde (CCA)
• A fixed minimum farmgate price each season (315 CFA/kg in 2023; 275 CFA/kg in 2024)
• An export tax of about 98.4 CFA/kg on raw nuts to discourage unprocessed exports
• Direct subsidies to processors (up to 400 CFA/kg for kernels and 150 CFA for lower grades)
• Tax exemptions on processing equipment and kernel exports
• Cashew-specific industrial zones and an innovation centre to train technicians

All of this is tied to a clear strategic objective: process around half of the national crop domestically in the coming years.

The capacity and volume numbers show how fast this is happening. Installed capacity climbed from 68,500 MT in 2015 to roughly 350,000 MT in 2024, and to about 432,000 MT in early 2025 as new plants from Valency (45,000 MT/year) and Robust International (≈37,000 MT/year) came online. Actual processing has surged from about 103,000 MT in 2020 to around 345,000 MT in 2024, meaning utilisation is close to 98% in the most recent season.

Kernel exports tell the same story: Côte d’Ivoire shipped 72,000 MT of kernels in 2024, more than five times the volume exported in 2020, placing the country firmly as the world’s #3 kernel producer behind Vietnam and India (Reuters, CICC, World Bank, Ecofin).

Benin: The GDIZ bet and the export-ban shock

Benin chose a more abrupt path.

In April 2024, the government imposed a complete ban on raw cashew exports, forcing all nuts into domestic channels to feed the new Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone (GDIZ). The zone already hosts around 130,800 MT of installed processing capacity and is targeting 150,000 MT by 2026, enough to handle 50–70% of Benin’s own crop if fully utilized (CICC Benin, Food Business Africa).

On paper, this is a textbook industrialisation push. In practice, the mid-season ban triggered a predictable reaction: nuts started moving informally into neighbouring Togo, where there was no such restriction. Vietnam and India together reported 224,000 tons of RCN “from Togo” in 2024, roughly nine times Togo’s actual production, indicating that much of that volume was in fact Beninese nuts rerouted through Lomé (Food Business Africa).

The GDIZ model remains one of the most ambitious industrial projects in the region, but the 2024 experience underscores how unilateral bans, introduced mid-season, tend to create smuggling and volatility rather than cleanly shifting all volume into domestic factories.

Ghana: Tightening control without bans

Ghana has taken a more incremental route centered on regulation and institution-building.

• Creation of the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA) in 2019
• Introduction of a minimum producer price (GHS 8.50/kg for the 2023 season)
• A new export permit system for unprocessed cashew exports (effective 2023–2025) to ensure levies are paid and quality rules followed (TCDA)

On the processing side, Ghana had about 65,000 MT of installed capacity in 2022, and by 2024 processors were handling 45,360 MT, roughly 18% of the national crop (~252,000 MT). The industry is targeting 85,000 MT by 2026, supported by initiatives like “One District, One Factory” and foreign-backed plants (CICC, Ecofin).

But Ghana’s relatively open export regime also turned it into a corridor for regional nuts. In 2024, Vietnam and India reported around 475,000 MT of RCN imports from Ghana, while Ghana’s own production sat near 150,000 MT. The difference was made up by nuts trucked in from Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Mali, illustrating how policy gaps between neighbours re-route trade rather than reduce it.

Nigeria and Burkina Faso: Incentives, taxes, and FX

Nigeria and Burkina Faso have opted for more cautious mixes of incentives and restrictions:

• Burkina Faso uses export taxes (around 33 CFA/kg in 2022), indicative farmgate price ranges, and occasional seasonal export suspensions to protect local processors, but utilization of its ~50,000 MT capacity remains low, only about 3,246 MT processed in 2022 (CICC)
• Nigeria produces an estimated 200–220,000 MT of RCN annually and processes less than 10%, but is expanding via projects like Valency’s factory (backed by a US$15 million investment from partners such as BII and Oikocredit). Crucially, Nigeria’s 2023 FX liberalisation improved formal export incentives after years of an overvalued official rate that had pushed trade into informal channels (Tridge, Nanyang Technological University).

Taken together, these policies mark a clear shift: West Africa is no longer content to be just the farm. It’s building factories, regulators, and tax regimes designed to keep more value at origin.

 

Vietnam and Cambodia: The Processing Engine and Its New Lifeline

Vietnam’s processing scale

Vietnam remains the undisputed center of global cashew processing.

Between 2020 and 2023, the country processed on the order of 2.0 to 2.7 million tons of RCN per year, combining imports and a domestic crop of roughly 300,000 MT. Raw imports were about 1.68 million MT in 2020, surged to 2.56 million MT in 2021, dipped to ~1.9 million MT in 2022, and then recovered to ~2.38 million MT in 2023. By October 2025, imports had already reached 2.6 million MT, putting total 2025 throughput on track to approach or exceed 3 million tons (WITS, Vietnamnet).

Kernel exports follow that curve:

• ~515,000 MT in 2020
• ~579,000 MT in 2021
• 519,782 MT in 2022
• ~644,000 MT in 2023
• A record ~730,000 MT in 2024, with 2025 targeting US$5 billion in export value (≈750–800,000 MT of kernels) (VnCommEx, Eurocham, Agribank).

Those volumes translate into around 60–70% of global kernel output and roughly 80% of all kernel exports, leaving most other origins, including West Africa, still priced off Vietnam’s FOB offers.

Cambodia: Vietnam’s external farm

The other, newer pillar in this system is Cambodia.

Cambodia’s RCN production has grown from tens of thousands of tons a decade ago to around 840,000 MT in 2024, with about 700,000 hectares under cashew and yields of ~1.4 MT/ha, among the highest globally. That makes Cambodia the world’s #2 raw cashew producer today, behind only Côte d’Ivoire.

Exports are overwhelmingly tied to Vietnam:

• 2019: roughly 540–600,000 MT exported
• 2020: around 860,000 MT
• 2021: 1.0–1.1 million MT, briefly rivaling Côte d’Ivoire’s crop
• 2022–2023: weather-related dips, with about 670,000 MT exported in 2022
• 2024: strong rebound, ~830,000 MT produced by July, with ~780,000 MT shipped to Vietnam in the first seven months alone
• 2025: nearly 1.0 million MT exported to Vietnam in the first ten months, worth about US$1.47 billion (GIZ, Cambodianess, VnExpress)

In most years, 95–98% of Cambodia’s RCN goes straight to Vietnam. Cambodian processing capacity remains small; domestic factories could, if fully utilized, place the country in the global top ten, but for now Cambodia functions primarily as a dedicated raw supplier to Vietnamese processors.

From a market-structure point of view, this means Vietnam’s processing scale increasingly rests on two pillars of raw supply:

1. West Africa, especially Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria
2. Cambodia, as a high-yield, tightly integrated supplier

Any policy shock in Abidjan, Cotonou, Accra, or climate shock in Cambodia, now has a direct impact on Vietnamese margins and global kernel availability.

 

Trade Flows and Arbitrage: When Policy Redraws the Map

With West Africa tightening policy and building factories, the trade map has started to bend.

Classic flows: Africa to Asia

In 2023, Côte d’Ivoire exported about 849,000 MT of RCN, with roughly 81% going to Vietnam and around 18% to India (Reuters). Across the wider region, more than 80% of West African raw exports still ended up in Vietnamese or Indian factories.

New flows: smuggling and re-routing

Differences in taxes, minimum prices and bans have created profitable arbitrage routes:

• After Benin’s 2024 ban, RCN exports labelled as “Togolese” jumped to 224,000 MT, despite Togo’s much smaller real crop.
• Ghana’s relatively lighter regime helped it emerge as a major transit hub, with reported exports far outrunning its own production.
• Côte d’Ivoire’s fixed farmgate price and export levies encouraged nuts to move informally into Ghana when price gaps were wide.

From a buyer’s perspective, this doesn’t always reduce physical availability. Vietnam still gets the nuts, but it clouds origin data, complicates risk assessment, and makes policy outcomes harder to read.

Vietnam’s response: diversify origin, deepen Cambodia

Faced with more policy noise in West Africa, Vietnamese buyers have:

• Stepped up late-season buying in East Africa, particularly Tanzania, when West African supply tightens (Expana)
• Deepened relationships and investment in Cambodia to secure a more predictable, nearby raw stream

The net effect is a system where:

• West Africa supplies most of the world’s raw nuts
• Vietnam and India still handle most of the processing
• Cambodia has become a strategic buffer in Vietnam’s raw supply chain

For traders, this means origin and routing risk are now as important as headline volume numbers.

 

Who Sets the Price? Market Power in Transition

Kernel prices: still made in Asia

Benchmark WW320 kernel prices have mostly traded in the US$3.00–3.60/lb range in recent years, far below the US$4.50–5.00 peaks seen in 2017. Improvements in processing efficiency in Vietnam, combined with ample global crops, have kept kernels in a relatively narrow band.

Because Vietnam alone accounts for around 60–70% of global kernel output and roughly 80% of exports, kernel prices are still effectively set in Ho Chi Minh City, with India’s processors influencing the market more via their demand for raw nuts than via kernel export offers.

African processors, even with Côte d’Ivoire’s gains, remain price-takers on kernels: Ivorian exports of 72,000 MT in 2024 represent perhaps 7–8% of global kernel output, enough to matter, but not yet enough to dislodge Vietnam as the reference origin.

Raw nut prices: African leverage, Asian demand

On the RCN side, the dynamic is more balanced.

• West Africa controls around 57% of global raw supply.
• Vietnam and India control most of the installed processing capacity and therefore the demand side.

Farmgate prices in West Africa have been heavily influenced by policy:

• Côte d’Ivoire’s minimum prices (400 CFA/kg in 2020, easing to 305–315 CFA/kg in 2021–2023, then 275 CFA/kg in 2024) and export subsidy scheme
• Ghana’s higher announced minimum (GHS 8.5/kg, roughly equivalent to over 500 CFA/kg)
• Benin’s export taxes and then full ban, which pushed local farmgate prices down as farmers had fewer legal buyers
• Nigeria’s FX reform in 2023, which allowed exporters to secure more naira per dollar and lifted farmgate prices closer to regional levels

Export prices have mirrored global fundamentals:

• Around US$900–1,100/MT during the COVID-disrupted 2020 season
• Firming toward US$1,500+/MT in 2022 on strong kernel demand and logistical constraints
• Settling around US$1,200–1,300/MT in 2023–2024, with Tanzania’s late-2024 auctions clearing closer to US$1,700–1,800/MT.

In theory, West African producers could use their dominant share of raw supply, and instruments like export taxes or coordinated restrictions, to exert stronger influence on RCN prices. In practice, fragmented policy and easy cross-border arbitrage have kept much of that potential leverage unrealised so far.

 

Structural Frictions: Why African Processing Still Has a Cost Handicap

Behind the policy headlines, there are persistent structural issues that continue to hold back African processors relative to their Vietnamese and Indian peers:

• Energy costs: Industrial power in many West African markets runs at roughly US$0.15–0.25/kWh, versus about US$0.07–0.10/kWh in Vietnam. Frequent outages in countries like Nigeria push factories onto diesel generators, increasing per-kilo processing costs.
• Financing: Processing is extremely working-capital intensive, as RCN for the whole year must be bought in a short harvest window. Many African processors face double-digit interest rates, tight collateral requirements, and limited bank appetite for agricultural risk, leaving capacity under-utilised.
• Skills & productivity: Labour productivity in West African plants is generally lower than in Vietnam/India. Many factories still rely on expatriate managers to run lines efficiently, and higher breakage rates or inconsistent grading can erode margins.
• Certification & quality systems: Meeting BRC, HACCP, FSMA and traceability demands remains a hurdle for many processors, limiting access to premium buyers and sometimes forcing African kernels to sell at a discount relative to Vietnamese product.
• Service ecosystem: Spare parts and maintenance support are thin on the ground. When machinery fails, plants can wait weeks for parts from Asia, creating downtime that Vietnamese competitors seldom face.

Projects like the ACA Quality & Sustainability Seal, Côte d’Ivoire’s CITA innovation center, and donor-backed financing facilities (World Bank, ITC/CBI, USDA PRO-Cashew) are all aimed at closing these gaps, but they will take time to fully change the cost curve (CBI).

 

What This Means for You

Taken together, the developments between 2020 and 2025 point toward a more multipolar cashew market:

• More origins matter. Côte d’Ivoire and Benin are no longer just RCN suppliers; they are becoming meaningful kernel origins. Cambodia has become a structural pillar of Vietnam’s raw supply.
• Policy risk is now central. Export bans, minimum prices, and permit regimes in West Africa directly affect your raw sourcing options and timing.
• Data is messier. Large discrepancies between reported exports and actual production in transit countries (Ghana, Togo) mean origin labels no longer always reflect where nuts were grown.
• Competition is shifting midstream. As African kernels enter the market in greater volume, they will gradually compete with Vietnamese offers, especially once more plants reach scale, certification, and reliability.

For traders, this means re-thinking strategies around:

• Origin diversification: deeper engagement in both West Africa and East/Southeast Asia
• Contract structure: more long-term offtake agreements with origin-level processors
• Risk management: closer monitoring of regional policy and structural bottlenecks

For roasters and manufacturers, it means:

• More choice of kernel origin over time
• New relationships to build with African processors
• The opportunity to diversify away from single-origin dependence while supporting value addition at origin.

 

Conclusion: A Power Balance in Motion

Between 2020 and 2025, the global cashew industry has quietly but decisively moved into a new phase.

West Africa now produces the majority of the world’s raw cashew nuts and is rapidly scaling processing capacity, led by Côte d’Ivoire’s near-full-utilisation plants and Benin’s industrial-zone model. Cambodia has emerged as a high-yield, tightly integrated supplier that underpins Vietnam’s processing machine. Vietnam and India still define kernel pricing, but they now operate in a world where origin countries have stronger tools, more capacity, and clearer ambitions to keep value at home.

The old, linear chain; Africa grows, Asia processes, the rest of the world buys, is being replaced by a more complex, more regionalised structure. For traders, roasters, and industrial buyers, the question is no longer if this shift will matter for your business, but how quickly you adapt to it.

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