This document focuses on implication of agricultural reform for the alleviation of rural poverty in Africa. The document also was prepared for presentation at the Advisory Committee meeting on mobilization of domestic resources, agricultural reform and self-evaluation of good governance scheduled to be convened by the Global Coalition for Africa in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 1-3 June 1994.

The first four years of the 1990s indicate that African economies have grown by a mere 1.5 per cent per annum worse than during the "lost decade" of the 1980s when Africa's economic annual growth rate was on average 1.8 per cent during the period 1980-1990. This growth is barely half of the rate of growth of Africa's population and is well below the annual average growth target of 4 per cent set by the World Food Conference in 1974, and still worse than the 6 per cent set in the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s.

This paper focuses on report of the workshop on grain marketing in transition Harare, Zimbabwe 11-17 October 1993. The purpose of the mission to Harare, Zimbabwe from 9-17 October 1993 was to service the Association of Food Marketing in Eastern and Southern African sub region workshop on "Grain Marketing in Transition".