Can Tho (VNA) – President of the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) Tran Thanh Man and his Ivorian counterpart Patrick Achi on August 25 visited and studied high-tech agricultural and seafood processing models in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.
The trip to Trung An High-Tech Agriculture JSC and Can Tho Import-Export Seafood JSC (Caseamex) was part of the Ivorian leader's official visit to Vietnam from August 23-26.
At Trung An, the two leaders and their delegations learned about the company’s rice production, processing, and export operations and viewed its range of rice and processed rice products.
With about 18 years of experience in rice exports, Trung An has developed a high-tech, closed production and processing chain. The company is also among Vietnamese businesses that have established an export network in Côte d'Ivoire.
Agricultural products, particularly rice, are an important driver of trade between Vietnam and Côte d'Ivoire. Côte d'Ivoire is currently Vietnam’s third-largest rice export market, while Vietnam imports cashew nuts, cotton and other raw materials from the West African country.
The visit provided an opportunity for the Ivorian delegation to learn from Vietnam’s experience in increasing rice production and developing processing capacity. Vietnam produces about 45 million tonnes of paddy annually, compared with around 2 million tonnes in Côte d'Ivoire, despite the two countries having comparable land areas.
The delegation also visited a demonstration field of promising rice varieties for the 2026 summer-autumn crop in Can Tho city.
At Caseamex, NA President Achi said Africa is a market with great potential, offering opportunities for Vietnamese products and technologies to expand their presence on the continent.
He said Côte d'Ivoire could become an attractive destination for Vietnamese businesses seeking to expand their markets, invest, and develop value chains in Africa.
The Ivorian NA leader pledged to continue working closely with NA President Man and promote exchanges between relevant agencies of the two countries to make bilateral cooperation, particularly in agriculture, more substantive and effective.
In the seafood sector, he expressed his hope that Vietnamese businesses would not only export fish and seafood products to Côte d'Ivoire but also invest in equipment and transfer technologies to help the country strengthen its food security.
Caseamex is a long-established seafood processing and export company in the Mekong Delta. Its key product is pangasius, including frozen fillets and a range of value-added processed products, which are exported to more than 50 countries and territories.
The visit by the two legislative leaders is expected to create new opportunities and an important bridge for stronger trade, economic cooperation and investment between Vietnamese and Ivorian businesses, particularly in agriculture and fisheries./.
