Cover_Rebuilding West Africas Food Potential

Chapter 16. Enhancing cassava marketing and processing in Cameroon 515

Wholesalers/collectors (Bayamsellam)

They source cassava products by collecting themselves or through agents with whom they have close,
kinship-based, or familial relationships from producers (personal) and from weekly markets located
in production areas. Those wholesalers/collectors in general specialize in one particular by-product:
gari, fufu, or waterfufu. They have access to warehouses in the market place. In Douala, they can be
found in the central market “marché de la gare” for fufu and gari marketing, and at the “marché
des chèvres” for waterfufu. In Yaoundé, those stakeholders are based in the Mokolo market for gari.
Crossing information sources, it appears that all of them manage to sell over 40 tons of gari on a
weekly basis in this specific market. Fufu stakeholders are based in Mfoundi and Mokolo market places
while waterfufu can be found at the Mfoundi and Acacia (Mbiyem Assi) markets.

They practice marketing either in warehouses (Yaoundé), or in the open markets (Douala). Those
market places are the main hub for each city, of products’ marketing and dispatch large purchased
quantities to other intermediaries or directly to final consumers (households, restaurants, or processors
in other sectors, e.g. starch processing, animal feeding).

The set of products owned by a wholesaler in Douala and Yaoundé market places

Relationships between wholesalers and producers are in general based on loyalty and trust, when
quality is established (and consistency). But relationships between wholesalers and collectors are
different since it is the quality of available products which matters.

Wholesalers/retailers

These are operators who source quantities from producers and collectors and who retail small
quantities (1 to 15 litres) to final consumers (households and restaurants) and to grocers (only gari
though). Almost all work in retail, like the waterfufu wholesalers from the northwest.

An example of products products sold by a wholesaler/retailer

Wholesalers face several constraints which ultimately affect prices and cause delivery delays.

With regard to sourcing, such constraints lie in the bad road conditions and landlocked production areas,
high transportation costs to the Yaoundé markets (around 7,000 CFAF per 100 Kg-packaged bag: 1,500
from villages to Bamenda, 2,500 from Bamenda to Yaoundé, and 3,000 other costs for labor and taxes).

Regarding products, there is a lack of homogeneity and high rates of perishability which reduce profits for
traders and retailers. Consignments of gari which have deteriorated have been returned from neighboring
countries, forcing wholesales to lower prices to avoid spoilage, sometimes below the production cost.

Waterfufu (50 kg)
from Northwest
region at the
« marché des

Waterfufu from the

Center region (50Kg) at

the Mfoundi market in

Yaoundé

Fufu balls dried in the

granary of Moungo at

the Douala central

market

Bafia cossettes (50kg)

aligned bags within a

wholesale warehouse at the

Mfoundi marketi in Yaoundé

Fufu bowls

(Souza)

Gari in retailed quantities

(Mokolo market in Yaoundé)

Waterfufu originating from North West

Acacia Market, Biyem-Assi Yaoundé