The Rice Sector in Côte d’Ivoire: How Can We Harness the Potential of Our Local Rice Mills?

In Côte d’Ivoire, despite strong production potential, many rice mills continue to face persistent structural challenges: limited access to financing, fragile cash flow management, and a lack of proficiency in the marketing tools needed to access more lucrative markets.

To address these constraints in a practical way, German development cooperation, through the GIZ/MOVE project, is implementing the Rice Miller Business Training (RMBT) approach. Structured around four complementary modules spread over approximately ten months, this approach combines training and coaching to promote the effective application of what is learned within the rice mills. Following an initial session focused on Developing Profitable Agricultural Services in February 2026 in Yamoussoukro, a new phase of implementation took place recently.

In Bouaké (Hôtel du Stade), 23 participants from 10 rice mills—with a strong representation of women and young people—took part in a workshop focused on two key topics: practical marketing and basic finance as applied to rice mills.

 

 

This workshop is part of the ongoing RMBT initiative and aims to strengthen essential skills to improve the management and economic performance of rice mills.

Objective: to enable rice mills to enhance their competitiveness, market access, and ability to secure financing.

Specifically, participants worked on:

Calculating production costs and the break-even point
Cash flow management
Using the 6P marketing mix (Product, Place, Price, Promotion, People, Process) to better promote local rice
Structuring internal processes to improve the credibility and bankability of businesses.

 

As Ms. AKA Jocelyne, Managing Partner of the Compagnie Africaine de Riz rice mill, points out:
“Thanks to the content of this training, we already have the tools we need to raise the standard of our rice mill. It is now up to us to use them effectively.”

Beyond the training itself, the RMBT approach is based on ongoing support: after each module, the rice mills receive in-person and remote coaching to facilitate the implementation of what they have learned. This phase, currently underway, will be crucial for observing the first concrete changes in management, performance, and market access.

As part of this effort, new sessions are planned to complete the training cycle, while discussions are underway at the national and regional levels to embed and scale up the approach for the benefit of a larger number of rice mills.

The project “Market-Oriented Value Chains for Employment and Growth in the ECOWAS Region” (GIZ/MOVE) is co-financed by the European Union (EU) under the Samoa Agreement with the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), the Gates Foundation (GF), and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.