76 Rebuilding West Africa’s food potential
agencies also suffered from an erosion of qualified technical and managerial talent, depriving them of the
ability to carry out analysis, forecasting and planning, and resulting in poor decisions and myopic views of
the value chain and future trends. Likewise, weak roles played by producers and their organizations were
evident in most cases (even when producers were organized, as in Mali and Senegal). Without strong,
capable and competent organizational leadership it is hard to ensure sustainably strong performance within
the commodity value chain. Consequently, good and inclusive governance should lead to better long-term
planning, especially if key players are involved. Agroprocessors need to coordinate among themselves and
explore win-win opportunities with state agencies and credible producer organizations to forge contractual
buyer-seller arrangements. Strengthening producer organizations to acquire economic and market credibility
is an essential step toward value chain development.For high-value export commodities run by the private sector and tied to global value chains led by retailers in
high-income countries, the main lesson is that when the states do not interfere but allow the private actors
to coordinate freely among themselves, they usually perform much better than when the state is in control.
Examples of growing export markets and captured market shares can be found in West Africa. However, in
each of these cases, the system is unfavourable to small-scale producers, who wind up marginalized. Greater
opportunities exist for high-value products that have a sizeable outlet in the domestic market. In these cases,
there are greater opportunities for agribusinesses to forge contractual or out grower schemes with farmers.
However, evidence shows that actual cases of this kind remain few and far between and that more can be
done to foster stronger supply/buy partnerships between agribusiness and smallholders.What do these experiences say about staple food value chains such as maize and cassava, two critically
important commodities in West Africa on the verge of becoming major cash crops serving the vast
domestic and regional market? Staple food value chains (such as maize and cassava) can serve several
important market outlets, all of which are potentially huge (food, feed and industrial use). In these value
chains, the contribution of the state, though critical, is vastly different from the type of interventionism
that prevailed (before its demise) with the export commodity models.What follows are a set of recommendations on how to rebuild food value chains in West Africa, ensuring
that they can be both competitive and inclusive of smallholders.Recommendations:Rebuilding the traditional export commodity model:- Strengthen risk-management capacity for farmers: this involves providing insurance, transparent
and actionable market information, and technical, managerial, financial and leadership training. - Promote further processing to add value: work with agroprocessors and finance agencies under PPPs to
coordinate investments in infrastructure, research, productivity-enhancing initiatives and training to raise
the technical capacity of agribusiness managers and staff and to facilitate procurement from farmers. - Develop more transparent and inclusive governance: this requires promoting powerful, competently-
led interprofessions and producers’ organizations with qualified leaders who are well-informed and
competent to best articulate the needs of the farmers and to bargain for win-win solutions with other
value chain stakeholders. Good governance is built on the basis of empowered parties; this takes time
but needs an enabling regulatory and institutional framework to build strong cooperatives and producer
organizations capable of integrating the entire value chain interprofessions. - Clearly delineate the role of the state as that of regulator and facilitator but not direct manager of
market operations and activities: the state must support the laws and regulations and provide the
right incentives to allow private actors to coordinate their actions to create greater value along the