476 Rebuilding West Africa’s food potential
- Conclusion
In West Africa, maize is hugely important for agricultural transformation, intraregional trade integration
and food security. Maize can serve multiple market outlets (food, feed and industrial applications) with
significant opportunities for expansion and agroprocessing development. In the case of Burkina Faso,
the authors examine the key obstacles facing maize value chain development and review the incentives
required to transform maize from a predominantly self-consumed crop into a cash commodity serving
the needs of several growing market outlets (processed food, animal feed, breweries). Driven by strong
and multiple demand sources, incentives do exist for greater uptake of productivity techniques (fertil-
izers, seeds) and improved maize supply quality (including post-harvest).The maize sector continues to be hampered by multiple market and institutional failures. On the market-
ing side, maize value chain actors confront large seasonal price variability and variation in supply and
quality. Institutional obstacles include the lack of an effective legal system and weak commercial and
market transactions, all of which limit the growth potential for the agroprocessing sector. Institutional-
type reforms include support to credit schemes and incentives such as subsidizing collective storage for
use in inventory credit (warrantage). As was pointed out for other commodities, successful institutional
reforms hinge on the emergence of credible and business-oriented producer organizations able to
mediate between producers and credit institutions to facilitate adoption of new technologies and to
perform collective purchases and sales. Maize trade within West Africa is much lower than its potential.
However, improving maize intraregional trade requires a better understanding of the economic and
business costs of current barriers to trade, as well as better communication with policy-makers about
the magnitude of the resulting costs to national food security.