Call for Special Issue Deadline for Abstracts Submission: July 30, 2020 Full name / name of organization: Food Processing and Consumer Goods in Ghana/ BET Ghana Project Call for Research Papers Journal of Business and Enterprise Development (JOBED) at the University of Cape Coast invites papers for special issue. Abstracts Submission Deadline: July 30, 2020 Submission of Paper Due: September 12, 2020 Publication Date: December 2020 Background The consumer goods and food processing (CG & FP) industry are one of the most important sectors in the Ghanaian economy. This is because the sector provides an avenue for the processing of agricultural products, serves as source of livelihood, income and employment for a greater majority of its population (especially the youth and the graduates). The creation of the consumer goods and food processing industry dated back 1957, where the then Nkrumah administration’s import-substitution strategy led to the creation of state-owned enterprises for the processing of tomatoes, sugar, cocoa, meat and fruits (Ackah, Adjasi, & Turkson, 2014). Currently, all these state-owned enterprises have been shut down or privatised which has led to the decline in the industry’s contribution towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 10.2% in 2006 to 4.7% in 2015 (GSS, 2015). In Ghana, the food processing industry has not received much attention in terms of its structure, investments and participation from local players. The few businesses in the industry are large scale multinational food companies. The rest are organized at a very micro-level with less growth potential. In view of this, the country imports substantial portions of its consumer goods and processed foods from abroad, thus increasing the countries import bill. Furthermore, there is the fear the few manufacturing facilities could re-locate in times of declining profits. It is clear that the foreign market has outcompeted the local market. More than 86% of processed tomatoes and 90% of poultry on the local market were imported as the country ranked third-largest importer of chicken in South Sahara Africa (Andam & Silver, 2016). There is, therefore, the need to nurture indigenous firms in the industry, and enhance the operations of key industry actors, especially, crop producers and processors. Although several attempts, including tax holidays and other incentives, have been made in policy to encourage local participation, the sector’s output is still too small to match the growing local demand (Wolter, 2008). The response to these incentives has been far below expectation because managerial inefficiencies, finance, and infrastructure still remain a major bottleneck in the industry. To help remediate this current problem, it is imperative that a baseline study is conducted to diagnose the consumer market and food processing industry and determine its current state. This would help develop a proper starting point for project solutions. Objective This book provides relevant practical and professional practices in the consumer goods and food processing sector. It uses real life industry-based stories about the sector focusing on issues of innovations, technologies, standardization and quality food processing. Core areas to be covered include food processing, finance, marketing, supply chain, quality management, marketing, business development services, process technologies and innovations, bookkeeping and accounting. Target Audience The target audience of this special issue will be composed of but not limited to professionals and researchers working in the fields of food processing, marketing of processed foods, financing of consumer goods, experts in the supply chain, and quality, standardization, packaging and exports. Moreover, the book will provide insights to both the specialized and general reader in the fields mentioned above. Recommended Topics 1. Consumer Goods Value Chain 2. Food Processing Value Chain 3. Business Development Services 4. Innovations in food Processing 5. Standardization and Quality Assurance 6. Formal and Informal Food Processing 7. Food Processing Technologies 8. Financing & Investments Consumer Goods and Food Processing 9. Marketing of Processed Food 10. Competencies in Food Processing 11. E-Commerce and marketing of Consumer Goods 12. economic success factors of SMEs in the CG&FP industry Submission Procedure Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers on or before September 12, 2020. The length of a paper should range between 7,000 and 10,000 words. Authors will be notified by October 2, 2020 about the status of their submission. Revised papers are expected to be submitted by October 23, 2020. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process. Publisher Journal of Business and Enterprise Development Important Dates Abstracts Submission Deadline: July 30, 2020 Submission of Paper Due: September 12, 2020 Publication Date: December 2020 Inquiries Prof. F. O. Boachie-Mensah University of Cape Coast, Ghana fboachie-mensah@ucc.edu.gh Details on Manuscript Submission Please carefully follow the guidelines below as you write. Any manuscripts not meeting these guidelines will be returned to the author(s) for correction, which can cause significant delays in the publication of your work. GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS 1. Papers submitted must be original, unpublished, and well referenced. 2. Reference citations must be formatted to conform strictly to the American Psychological Association (APA) publication manual, 6th edition. 3. A paper should have an abstract of not more than 100 words, should be between 10 and 20 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12 and include a reference list. 4. Authors should provide the following details on the cover page attached to the paper: name, address, institutional affiliation, e-mail, and phone number. 5. Authors must ensure that their papers are free of spelling and grammatical errors and typos. 6. Research papers and research notes should not exceed 10,000 and 3,000 words, respectively. 7. The first page of an article should contain the title of the paper, name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) and an abstract not exceeding 200 words. 8. The first page should also contain five key words according to the Classification System for Journal Articles as used by the Journal of Economic Literature. 9. Equations in the text should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals within simple brackets and aligned against the right margin. 10. All appendices should be numbered consecutively using upper case roman numerals and shown before the list of references. 11. When formulae displayed have been derived by the author, the full derivations should be given on separate sheets (not to be published) for the information of the referees. 12. References should be cited within the text as follows: “According to Wickremasinghe (2005), foreign exchange market … These results are inconsistent with those of other studies (Perera, 1995; Silva, 2000).” 13. List of references should show each citation in alphabetical order. 14. Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. The corrected manuscripts should be submitted within 5 working days. 15. Submissions should be in electronic format and should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief via email address: jobed@ucc.edu.gh NOTE: The publisher and journal have a policy of “Zero Tolerance on Plagiarism.” We check the plagiarism issue through two methods: reviewer check and plagiarism prevention tool (turnitin.com).