Chapter 2. A historical comparative analysis of commodity development models in West Africa 77
supply chain and share more widely in the added value.- Strengthen the economic capacity of producer organizations: while membership should focus on
merit and active participation (and payment of dues), focus should be placed on ability and capacity
to deliver economic services to the members and not simply on the function of general lobbying of
the government to provide assistance to poor farmers.
Non-traditional high-value export commodity model:
- Establish that the role of the state is to maintain and strengthen regulations to support high quality
and standards. - Facilitate greater coordination among value chain players to enhance competitiveness of the export
market; this is a role for the state. - Promote domestic demand to encourage more participation by smallholders and to compensate for
their marginalization from the export market. - Facilitate farmers’ organizations, enhancing their ability to bargain effectively, and to have greater
access to information and technical, managerial and leadership training. - Encourage coordination between farmers and agroprocessors and facilitate opportunities for
contractual arrangements. - Sponsor multi-stakeholder forums, fairs and other meeting opportunities to bring all stakeholders
together to forge new relationships and business partnerships; this can be facilitated by the state.
Constructing the staple food value chain model:
- Support research, development and distribution of improved seeds; this is a key role for the state.
- Support and reduce the cost of credit for strategic staple food value chains that need special
assistance, through credit rates. - Support a fertilizer supply strategy based on facilitating procurement, storage and distribution to reduce the
cost to small farmers and enhance availability and timely access; the state should also strengthen the controls
for fertilizer quality and ensure that information on fertilizer use by crop is fully transmitted to producers. - Reduce marketing risks by supporting private-led multi-stakeholder schemes to generate and
distribute the needed market information to producers and value chain actors; such a market
information system must be demand-driven, mostly self-financed and durable (i.e. sustainable). - Encourage warrantage credit system by co-financing storage for producers’ organizations.
- Harmonize marketing and trade policies to encourage local and regional trade in staples.
- Provide support to producer organizations to become effective economic players; specifically, this would
entail: (i) improving ability to negotiate credits and finance; (ii) improving capacity to conclude contractual
arrangements with agrobusinesses, including outgrower schemes; (iii) strengthening internal leadership
capacity and governance to ensure enhanced role in the interprofession; (iv) training farmers in improving
quality of products supplied, especially to agroprocessing with high quality requirements; (v) subsidizing
technical managerial training for specific value chains and products. - Promote PPPs, which can take several forms within the staple food value chain model; specific
actions include: (i) institutionalize dialogue between public agencies and private actors to break
down mistrust, delineate the role of the state versus the private sector and build on new partnership
opportunities for collaboration; (ii) ensure effective participation of all-inclusive private actors and
producers during policy formulation and implementation; (iii) resist allowing the state to pick winners
and losers among sectors or to push for a particular market segment (a typical bias of ministries and
public agencies is to favour export commodities over products for domestic markets; instead the
state should allow market forces to determine which opportunities and value chains to develop –
whether for domestic demand outlets or for exports to regional markets or beyond).