In most African countries that depend on agriculture, policies are often blamed for poor economic performance and failure to improve the lives of ordinary people. While policy documents may make a lot of sense, the devil is in the implementation details.  What breaks or makes a policy is disciplined documentation of implementation steps including assumptions Read more about Why policies should be anchored on disciplined documentation[…]

One of the questions that have not received adequate answers for decades is: Who really sets prices in self-organized African mass markets? Formal markets like supermarkets may have a board that seats down to determine prices after examining costs and other factors. What happens in open mass markets?  Every open market has an invisible cartel Read more about Understanding pricing models is more important than the capacity to produce[…]

Some of the most powerful instincts about African agriculture and food systems are found only in territorial mass markets where the majority of smallholder farmers sell their commodities and the majority of low-income consumers get their food. That is why investment in data analyses is more important than collecting data for its own sake. Much Read more about Giving farmers, commodities and consumers a voice through market data[…]

Most market infrastructure built for vendors and low-income entrepreneurs in African countries end up abandoned due to lack of consultation – making the infrastructure less fit for purpose. In the spirit of fostering socio-economic justice, communities should be empowered to lead in building their own markets. Top-down solutions may be well-intentioned but people closest to Read more about Enabling communities to build their own markets fosters economic justice Most market infrastructure[…]

Using sweet potatoes and stories to demystify nutrition, science Had African policy makers, development agencies and nutritionists succeeded in embedding nutrition messages with the social fabric, malnutrition wouldn’t be high in African communities that are blessed with abundant and diverse food systems. By treating nutrition activities as sporadic news, the media has failed to make Read more about Using sweet potatoes and stories to demystify nutrition, science[…]

Fragmented production makes it difficult to sustain continuous innovation. When pumpkins are out of season, enterprises that make pumpkin juice and pumpkin-flavoured ice cream have to look for substitutes that may be more expensive. That is why every harvest requires tracking of supplies and prices in different markets. Such details can inform investment in food Read more about Continued innovation is difficult to sustain without consistent production[…]

For decades, companies that sell seed, fertilizer, chemicals and other inputs have been more interested in increasing their sales volumes irrespective of whether those inputs change the lives of farmers or not. An increase in the number of companies selling the same products to the same farmers in many African countries is not only confusing Read more about Why agricultural inputs suppliers should rethink their business models[…]

African universities and financial institutions haven’t done much to correct the negative perception and discourse about African mass markets and informality. An economic landscape in which smallholder farmers, artisans and traders have nurtured self-sufficient communities for decades cannot continue to be called informal and inferior. By now, African universities should have studied how these secondary Read more about Informality is an invitation for African universities and banks to do something with their knowledge[…]