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Growing Africa's Agriculture

AGRA's Market Access Program

In 2009, a group of 86 widowed women farmers in Kenyan sold US$86,000 worth of maize to the World Food Program (WFP). This turnaround of fortune was facilitated by an AGRA Markets Program grant to the Cereal Growers Association, which linked the women up with the WFP’s Purchase for Progress program. Another AGRA program also made a difference. The women’s group took out a loan from Equity Bank, through an innovative program initiated by AGRA. They used the money to purchase good seed and fertilizer, boosting their productivity. The investment paid off: the widowed farmers were able to sell their maize for a decent price. Many women used their profits to pay their children’s school fees and to reinvest in their farms.

These women farmers are a sign of hope for millions of Africa’s smallholder farmers who have been unable to realize profitable returns on their investments due to high post harvest losses, high transport costs, limited access to finance and to market information, and inappropriate policies.

AGRA’s Market Access Program works to overcome these challenges. It aims to increase food security, increase income and improve regional trade by organizing and empowering smallholder farmers, addressing systemic barriers to agricultural development and helping staple value chains to become more organized and diverse. Its mission is to direct investment and resources to improve the market infrastructure of Africa’s core food staples—such as cassava, maize, millet, rice, sorghum and grain legumes.

The Markets Program aims to make markets function better and more fairly for the poor by focusing on four strategic objectives: reducing transaction costs, increasing value addition in food usage, increasing demand through alternative uses, and promoting enabling legal and policy frameworks.

To improve the market opportunities for smallholder farmers, AGRA’s Market Access Program is investing in:

  • Reducing transaction costs by improving farm storage technologies; facilitating the development of warehouse receipt systems; commodity exchanges; and market information systems that provide timely and accurate information to smallholders.
  • Value addition to farmers’ crops by supporting efforts to institute grades and standards, and develop low cost small- and medium-scale processing facilities for drying, sorting and packaging.
  • Increasing demand for commodities by developing markets for alternative uses, such as processing cassava for animal feed.
  • Promoting an enabling environment by improving access to credit and removing inappropriate government policies that create major challenges for a variety of stakeholders across staple food commodity value chains in Africa.

Early Accomplishments

AGRA’s Market Access Program is the youngest of AGRA’s programs--it was launched in mid-2008--but is rapidly investing in a variety of efforts to improve African agriculture markets. For example, AGRA support for the Kenya Agriculture Commodity Exchange and a similar exchange in Malawi is linking small-scale farmers with vital information through local kiosks, radio broadcasts, e-mail, and mobile phone messages. Three-quarters of the farmers participating in the system report getting better prices.

AGRA is boosting incomes for 24,000 farmers by training them in key market functions. AGRA support for the NGO TechnoServe in Uganda has enabled 12,000 farmers--4600 of them women--to increase farm gate prices by 30 percent. Another program in Central and Eastern Kenya has improved market access for 12,000 farmers, one-third of them women. For example, the 100 members of the Kamahuha Farmers Group are selling produce at ten times more than the previous price.

AGRA also is partnering with the WFP to support its Purchase for Progress or P4P initiative in African countries. P4P seeks to not only purchase food directly from smallholder farmers but also to use WFP procurements as an opportunity to give farmers the tools they need to participate more broadly in agriculture markets. AGRA grants are supporting efforts to provide P4P farmers with core market access capabilities, including improved farm storage technologies and access to finance and market information systems. In Kenya, for example, the AGRA grant to the Cereal Growers Association will ultimately link 38,000 smallholder farmers to the P4P program.

AGRA’s Market Access Program is a key part of our comprehensive approach:

  • Completing the agriculture value chain: The Market Access Program focuses on post-harvest issues and marketing opportunities, complementing those aspects of AGRA’s work which focus on increasing farm productivity.
  • Increasing investments in yield-enhancing technologies: Chronically low productivity on African farms is the result of chronically low investments. But if farmers can earn an income from their efforts, they will be more likely to invest in the means to boost production, creating a virtuous cycle of investment, development and growth.
  • Building Public Private Partnerships: Providing farmers with a steady source of credit, market information, inventory systems, crop grading services, and linkages to a wide variety of buyers--such as traders, processors, agri-food companies, and retailers--present numerous opportunities for public private collaborations, strengthening both sectors.

Find out more about these and other Early Accomplishments.

African Agricultural Markets Facts

  • Some 70 to 90 percent of farms in Africa are smallholder operations involving less than two hectares of land and they account for the bulk of staple food production.
  • African farmers who sell surplus harvest routinely receive only 10 to 20 percent of the price of their products, with the rest eaten up by various transaction costs and post harvest losses.
  • Africa’s regional market for food staples is valued at US $150 billion and demand is expected to double by 2020. African farmers could substantially increase their income simply by meeting this domestic demand.
  • According to the 2002 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), improving rural roads to boost market access for smallholder farmers will require an initial investment of US $62 billion over some 10 to 15 years while operation and maintenance of these assets will require an additional US $37 billion.