With frequent reports El Nino weather phenomena across the world, signals from mass markets are becoming major sources of critical knowledge for adaptation to climate change. Increasing climate variability, shifting market dynamics, cross-border trade complexities, and the growing scale of informal markets demand a more advanced, integrated, and responsive early warning system. The rich intelligence Read more about Mass market signals are becoming more important in a changing climate[…]

By bringing diverse commodities and people together across boundaries, African mass markets create space for issues that are usually left unsaid.  While the formal mainstream media is more interested in what is happening right now, mass markets bring people together to discuss what and who is causing what is happening. For instance, mainstream media can Read more about What mass markets say about the political economy of African food systems[…]

Most conversations about food systems and climate change that happen in global conferences and capital city workshops continue to miss practical community voices. When a few community representatives are invited, the purpose is mostly superficial for legitimizing the event through media coverage. In some circumstances, development organizations get into a community and introduce a goat Read more about Pitfalls of taking community voices for granted in food systems projects[…]

What makes African territorial markets different from other markets is that they are not just about financial transactions. They are masters of conversational commerce and reliable interfaces for discovery, comparison, recommendations and informed decisions. The diversity of commodities shapes what consumers can buy while conversations shape how consumers buy what they want. Whereas formal markets Read more about African territorial markets are masters of conversational commerce[…]

What makes African territorial markets impossible to underestimate is not just their power to aggregate diverse commodities from every corner. They also give value to commodities whose nutritional and monetary contribution may remain invisible. It would be difficult to attach prices to indigenous fruits and other commodities if these commodities were not brought to one Read more about African mass markets as platforms for addressing hunger and malnutrition[…]

The World Food Program’s 2026 Global Outlook projects 318 million people will face crisis levels of hunger this year and the most affected countries are Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. Meanwhile, African territorial markets in big cities like Kampala (Nakasero & Nakawa market), Arusha (Kilombero market), Nairobi Read more about Africa can feed itself and also be a source of food aid for the whole world[…]

While collecting statistics through crop and livestock assessments is necessary, the most important missing link is interpreting and analyzing what is happening to different value chains. Such interpretations and analyses are the domain of crop and livestock specialists not statisticians.  Also important is capturing and analyzing market trends in order to show the return on Read more about When interpretation is more important than statistics[…]