Building Competitiveness in
Africa's Agriculture : A Guide to Value Chain Concepts
and Applications

The development and business communities
involved in the African agriculture and agribusiness sectors
have recently experienced a strong resurgence of interest in
promoting value chains as an approach that can help design
interventions geared to add value, lower transaction costs,
diversify rural economies, and contribute to increasing
rural household incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
countries. Enhancing value chain competitiveness is
increasingly recognized as an effective approach to
generating growth and reducing the rural poverty prevalent
in the region. This is a welcome development for
practitioners who have long been convinced of the need to
look differently at agriculture not just as a means of
survival, but as smaller or larger commercial businesses
linked to domestic and global markets and of the need to
identify and tap into new sources of potential growth and
value addition in the sector. Hopefully, renewed engagement
will lead to a substantial increase in the flow of financial
resources and technical assistance devoted to supporting
market-driven, competitive agro-enterprises and agricultural
value chains throughout the African continent. However,
there is danger that this renewed engagement may not last,
or may even backfire, if the high expectations placed on
promoting value chains are not met. Because the development
literature is not clear about the concepts and methods
relating to value chains, there is risk that sooner or later
the benefits of the value chain approach will be
overshadowed by unmet expectations. That in turn could cause
the approach to be discarded categorically. Although there
is no single way to mitigate such risks, this guide aims to
offer practical advice and tools to businessmen, policy
makers, representatives of farmer or trade organizations,
and others who are engaged in SSA agro-enterprise and
agribusiness development. This guide is particularly
designed for those who want to know more about value chain
based approaches, and how to use them in ways that can
contribute to sound operational decisions and results for
enterprise and industry development, as well as for policy
making with respect to doing business, stimulating
investment, and enhancing trade in the context of African agriculture.