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Cashew nuts are one of the world’s most valuable processed nuts. Mozambique, once the world’s largest producer, works with communities and the private sector to raise output. However, trade liberalisation, falling prices, new quality requirements and the buyer-driven nature of the cashew-nut supply chain are worsening working conditions.

Cashew nuts are Mozambique’s third most important export and an important source of cash income. Women play a central role in the production and use of cashew nuts. Collaborative research from the UK International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) explores the gender dimensions of liberalisation on the Mozambican cashew industry. The authors examine how women are involved, provide examples of better practice and suggest ways in which business could contribute to positive changes for women workers.

In the mid-1990s the World Bank pushed the Mozambican government to liberalise its cashew sector. As a result, by 1997 most processing factories closed down and 10,000 people had lost their jobs. Production has improved in recent years but is still only a third of the level of the early 1970s. Efforts to revive processing have been only modestly successful and today most raw cashew nuts are sent to India.

About 95 percent of the cashew nuts produced in Mozambique are grown by small producers and the sale of nuts provides income to approximately one million rural households. But work conditions in the processing units are not good. Cashew nut shells contain caustic oil which burns the skin and produces harmful fumes. It is difficult to peel the kernel without breaking it and women are employed for this job as employers believe they have ‘nimble fingers’. The women are paid on a piece rate basis and usually earn well below the national minimum wage.

Research in the Nampula province showed that:

• Women are unlikely to belong to farmer’s associations, receive training from extension workers or be involved in negotiations with buyers.
• Women laid off from processing factories have found it harder than men to find alternative employment.
• Employers’ perceptions of ‘suitable’ work for women means they are assigned to menial and dangerous work such as selecting and peeling nuts, and excluded from shelling nuts which tends to pay more, and from leadership positions.
• Poverty and lack of employment is driving men into the cashew-nut sector. 

Although liberalisation and competition has adversely affected wages and working conditions, there are examples of better employment and working arrangements in Mozambique. In the Namige area of Nampula, a factory started by a private entrepreneur has received technical help from an United States-based non-government organisation and marketing assistance from a Dutch development agency. Workers are given a free daily meal, holidays and health care.

The researcher suggests that policymakers:

• challenge assumptions that agricultural extension is gender-neutral and that women are better suited to some jobs in cashew processing
• realise that promoting trade liberalisation may not be beneficial to small producers unless there are supporting policies ensuring extension services, marketing infrastructure, fair prices and appropriate technology for growing and storing the nuts
• encourage grassroots producer and worker organisations that represent the interests of the men and women involved.

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