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[…]

Shopping malls are mushrooming across Africa but African policy makers are not ensuring that local products dominate those shopping malls. What is the point of building shopping malls that are full of Chinese products when African products are in the streets? On the other hand, the African continent has a lot of abandoned market infrastructure Read more about Building world class market infrastructure or globalizing African products[…]

In most African countries, the formal education system has not succeeded in creating conditions for knowledge to flow between different classes of economic actors and between the formal and informal economies. Consequently, the gap between formal and informal economic systems continues to widen as evidenced by how the informal economy fast becoming a secondary underground Read more about The value of enhancing knowledge flows between formal and informal economies[…]

Due to the colonial legacy that has looked down upon indigenous food for decades, diet and nutrition analyses in most African countries is based on data collected in supermarkets and other formal shops. Rarely is data collected from territorial mass food markets from which the majority get their food. That means data on nutrition is Read more about Using agroecology markets to inform diet analyses and community-led nutrition[…]

If developing countries treated farming like other professions, many farmers would have graduated from smallholder farming to large-scale farming in line with growth-oriented changes related to land size and markets. By now, millions of farmers have become extension officers and agricultural lecturers. Agricultural colleges would be training farmers as opposed to training extension officers on Read more about The value of bringing dignity and respect back to the farming profession[…]

If owning land and related natural resources was a panacea to development, communities and people who own fertile land would be enjoying better living standards than the landless. Evidence in many African countries is beginning to show that capacity to produce commodities and control the market is more important than owning land, water and the Read more about When and why capacity to produce is more important than land ownership[…]