Songon - The third edition of the International Cashew Processing Equipment and Technology Exhibition (SIETTA) will be held from 8 to 10 November at the Palace of Culture, the Minister of Commerce, Handicrafts and Promotion of SMEs, Souleymane Diarrassouba. This 2018 edition of SIETTA will be held around the theme, "Cashew processing, a mine of opportunities for youth empowerment". "The local processing of cashew nuts is a priority for the government, which intends to continue its efforts to promote integrated and sustainable development of the cashew nut sector in Côte d'Ivoire, with a view to increasing the value of cashew nuts in order to improve the quality of the cashew nuts. cashew industry is attractive to young people, "said Minister of Commerce Acting as interim Minister of Industry and Mines, he also informed at the launch that "the edition will also better assess the costs and performance of equipment and create business links between actors in the value chain ". The minister launched a call for the mobilization of national and international operators to take an active part so that this third edition will be a great success. Therefore, he asked that a place of choice be granted to national equipment manufacturers. For this year, the SIETTA will have the distinction of being coupled with two other major events of the world cashew sector. This is the third Council of Ministers of the International Cashew Council (ICCC) and the annual conference of the African Cashew Alliance (ACA). Taking stock of previous editions of SIETTA, the Director General of the Council of Cotton and Cashew, Dr. Adama Coulibaly, recalled that "the first edition of this show was held in November 2014 at the Treichville Sports Park (Abidjan ) around the theme "Promoting cashew processing equipment and technologies for an emerging Côte d'Ivoire by 2020" and registered more than 4,500 participants. Regarding the SIETTA 2016, he said that this second edition of the show had 12,000 visitors and participants over three days, with a strong international delegation of experts, buyers of raw cashew nuts and almonds as well cashew sector operators. The current production of Côte d'Ivoire's raw walnuts is estimated at 711,236 tonnes in 2017. The quantities processed locally increased from 31,220 tonnes in 2013, or 6.24% to 44,628 tonnes in 2017 for a conversion rate. Local 6.62%. The Government's goal is to achieve a transformation rate of 50% by 2020.