India to set up food processing cluster in Africa

The Indian Ministry of Food Processing is planning to invest Rs1.17bn ($23.72m) to set up a food processing cluster in Africa, as a part of a $5bn credit line announced at the India-Africa Forum Summit last year.

The investment will be used to build a common infrastructure for food processing units such as food testing labs, incubation centres, cold storage, standard designed factories, pre-cooling chambers and other facilities used by the food industry.

A top official from the ministry told the Economic Times that the cluster is likely to come up within the next three years.

"We are floating a competitive bid to appoint a project management agency which will help the ministry in implementing this project," the official said.

The final location of the project will be decided by the African Union, but the Indian ministry will be initially looking at four or five groups of countries, including one group comprising Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda.

The African Union would offer provisions such as basic infrastructure, free of cost land with last-mile connectivity, accelerated clearance, and incentives to attract investments into the cluster.

According to the ministry, the cluster will improve value chain and lower post-harvest wastage and losses with a capacity to process 250,000t of raw materials.

Several Indian private companies will be invited by the ministry to set up their business in the cluster, which will not only enable them to do business outside India, but also to access raw materials at lower costs.

The companies will be able to supply their food products to the African markets and export to Europe and other Asian countries.