Realizing the Potential of African Agriculture: Innovations and Market Access for Smallholder Farmers

Abstract

Agriculture increasingly occurs in a context where private entrepreneurs coordinate extensive value chains linking producers to consumers, sometimes across multiple countries. These dynamics drive agricultural development and innovation far more than before across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). More providers of knowledge are on the scene, particularly from the private sector and civil society, and they interact in new ways to generate ideas or develop responses to dynamics in agro-food value chains. A growing number of entrepreneurial smallholders are organizing to enter these value chains, but others struggle with the economic marginalization as innovative solutions do not reach them due to missing links in the value chains.

Keywords: Agricultural Innovations, Market Access, Value Chains, Smallholders, sub-Saharan Africa