Introduction

In Africa, rural poverty is a widespread phenomenon. While Africa has nearly 60 % of the world’s arable, uncultivated land, the continent is a major net importer of food. The agriculture sector has so far failed to become an engine of growth and economic transformation for most countries in the continent. Part of the problem lies in the market structures and in the poor institutions, policies, and infrastructure serving the agriculture sector. Often, the commercialization of the agriculture output is produced along a value chain where intermediaries, exporters, and downstream producers interact with farmers. While in Africa the farming sector is composed mostly of atomistic smallholders, the lower-layers of the value chains are usually dominated by a small number of firms. Farmers may suffer from the non-competitive behavior of other agents along the chain, or be constrained from selling output in markets because transport and other services are not available or are too costly. Our overall objective is to study market and institutional constraints affecting the further development of the traditional agriculture export sector (cash crops) and the import substitution agriculture sector (food crops), how this affects poverty and inequality reduction, food security issues, and the development of a competitive agribusiness sector in Sub Saharan Africa.