1.1 Direct private operators
1.2 Indirect private operators - banks
1.3 Public sector
1.4 Donor projects and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
There are many actors whose activities directly or indirectly influence this sector. These broadly fall into three categories, namely: direct private operators, indirect private operators and public operators.
1.1.1 Producers
1.1.2 Traders
1.1.3 Transporters
1.1.4 Processors
These are described as such because they operate directly within the sector and include producers, traders, transporters and processors.
Consumers are the final link and the reason for the existence of the food supply and distribution chain, since the ultimate aim of FSDSs is to satisfy their needs in terms of product quality, quantity, price, infrastructure, etc. Constraints experienced by consumers influence their behaviour and affect the entire chain (including the producer).
Producers constitute the first link in the food marketing chain where the supply of local produce to cities begins. After meeting household consumption needs, growers usually sell surplus produce at local markets. Normally, it is the wives of small-scale farmers who take such produce to local weekly markets with the men being involved only when relatively large volumes of produce are involved. The produce is displayed in large baskets (rice, fonio, maize and groundnuts) or in heaps (cassava, onion, yam and shea butter). Prices tend to be established by bargaining between buyers and sellers and usually affect incentive of the farmers to produce a surplus in subsequent seasons.
Cereals are grown primarily for household consumption with surpluses being marketed when the price is right. The case of fruits and vegetables is somewhat different. Village production of vegetables is dominated by women who produce first and foremost for the market as a means of obtaining the resources to buy other household consumer essentials such as meat, fish, soap, matches, candles, etc. Peri-urban market gardens are, however, dominated by men (either independently or in cooperatives) and their main activity is the production of vegetables primarily intended for sale. Fruit production is a male-dominated activity in which the bulk of the produce is sold. The type of fruit tree cultivated depends largely on the region.
Production of meat and fish is mainly in the hands of herdsmen and fishermen. Livestock farming is predominant in the Sudano-Sahel countries where extensive herding is carried out along with other agricultural activities that support about 70 percent of the population. Cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys and poultry are raised mainly for the market since there is minimal meat consumption in villages. Marketing, however, varies according to the type of animal. Cattle, for instance, are usually sold when the animals are seven to eight years old. Since herdsmen seldom own the cattle, owners must be consulted before any sale. The decision to sell is often determined by the owner's financial needs, with nearly all owners regarding their livestock as an "on-the-hoof bank account".
The situation with regard to the sale of sheep and goats is different. These animals are usually raised over shorter periods (annually) in order to realize income. Major sales occur at the time of Tabaski and other Muslim and Christian festivals when demand peaks and producers can maximize their earnings. Pigs and poultry are raised mainly for the market and production is concentrated in and around large cities. Farmers usually sell live animals at local weekly markets in rural areas. Their main customers are butchers; the animals are not weighed when sold.
Fresh, dried and smoked fish is widely consumed in African cities. In some regions along the coast and in river valleys fish is virtually the staple diet. Large public and private companies that own boats and refrigeration equipment carry out large-scale fishing. They supply local markets and also export to Europe. Countries such as Senegal and Mauritania have relatively well developed fishing industries that contribute significantly to earnings from merchandise trade.
The fishing industry in most African countries is, however, dominated by small-scale fishermen working at sea or in rivers and lakes, depending on the geography of the country. The main species caught include carp, sole, gilt-head, catfish and threadfin. In some countries the fishing trade tends to be dominated by particular tribes or groups like the Somonos of Upper Guinea and the Bozos of Mali with professional skills being passed down from fathers to sons. Although small-scale fishing is basically aimed at meeting household consumption needs, the existence of large and growing markets has encouraged surplus production with most fishermen depending on the industry as their main source of income.
This category covers many operators whose roles are well defined but actually vary depending on market opportunities. This often creates confusion in studies of individual produce chains and hinders the application of national trade regulations.
Collectors
Collectors are the second link in the supply chain for domestic agricultural produce. The women collectors are referred to in some countries as dioula mousso. Small-scale traders carry out most collecting, although farmers' associations or small-scale farmers themselves are sometimes involved in this activity. They tend to operate on behalf of wholesalers or sub-wholesalers, who usually finance their purchases, although a few are self-financed. Independent collectors sell their produce through urban-based market wholesalers or retailers and in some cases retail the produce themselves. Quite often they trade in other manufactured and imported products and staples such as salt, sugar, soap and oil. Collectors are usually well informed regarding their area, the producers and the quality, quantities and prices of local produce.
In the cereal and fruit-and-vegetable sectors, collection commonly occurs at local weekly markets where small farmers from different villages often assemble, but some collectors also travel from village to village buying and storing produce. When sizeable volumes of produce have been accumulated it is transported to the cities often by hired trucks. There are collectors in the meat distribution chain as well but the distinction between them and butchers (who also take on the role of wholesalers and retailers) is often blurred. Collectors obtain their supplies from assembly markets or directly from livestock farmers and resell either at wholesale (redistribution) markets to livestock dealers or directly to butchers at consumer markets in large cities.
Supply chains for fresh fish are rather short. The collectors, who are often women, buy from fishermen and sell directly at consumer markets in cities. Collectors of locally processed fish (dried or smoked) visit fishing villages or local weekly markets to purchase the processed fish, which is sold directly at consumer markets in inland areas.
Wholesalers
Wholesalers normally trade in cities and large rural centres where they assemble, store and resell produce to retailers. They usually have storage facilities in urban areas and rural marketplaces and sometimes own trucks and vans with which they transport produce. The scale of their operations is often determined by the amount of their capital since most of them depend on self-financing.
Cereal wholesalers usually deal in several items in order to spread financial risks. They often sell imported items such as rice, wheat flour and manufactured goods as well as other local produce such as kola, palm oil and dried peppers. These traders normally sell goods in sacks or in smaller quantities by weight to public servants, other traders and market retailers. The marketing chain tends to become longer as reselling points increase in urban areas resulting from the multiplicity of small retailers. The network is usually packed during harvest periods.
Meat wholesalers usually operate in livestock markets in the towns where they live and are licensed to slaughter animals. They resell the meat to retail butchers at abattoir gates. Many wholesale butchers obtain their supplies from assembly markets in rural areas.
Importers
For a long time the state was the main cereal importer in most African countries, working through such specialized bodies as Office Nationale des Céréales (OFNACER) in Burkina Faso, Office des Produits Agricoles du Mali (OPAM) in Mali, and Entreprises Régionales de Commercialisation Agricole (ERCOA) in Guinea or through international food aid agencies. Private traders have only recently entered this market following the liberalization of trade as part of structural adjustment. In Guinea, for example, the state is no longer involved in food imports. In other countries such as Burkina Faso, traders tender for contracts with public bodies to build up buffer stocks of cereals while in Senegal the "Equalization Fund" continues to supervise the process of importing cereals.
Even during the period when the state dominated food imports, informal networks run by private operators were responsible for the importation of significant volumes of cereals from neighbouring countries. For example, for many years maize and white sorghum was exported from Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Markets in Burkina Faso received supplies of millet from Ghana and Mali, while maize from Mali was sold in Senegal and rice from Guinea was sold in markets in Mali. Given its informal nature, no official statistics exist on this trade which is bound to grow with trade liberalization in most African countries.
Private traders who import cereals from Asia often engage in the marketing of local produce as well. Most of them own warehouses and haulage trucks and usually import other staples such as sugar, flour, oil, dairy products and canned foods.
In the meat sector, livestock exports from the Sahelian countries more than doubled following the devaluation of the CFA franc, which made imports from the region to such countries as Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo more competitive than meat imported from Europe. The number of exporters and importers of livestock in the region has therefore risen. Livestock importers in Côte d'Ivoire are usually large-scale butchers who purchase directly from the producing Sahelian countries. They deal with traders in Mali and Burkina Faso who send stocks to them against receipt of letters of credit. Senegalese importers usually make purchases directly from markets in Mali and transport the livestock by train to Dakar.
There are very active import networks in the fish sector in West Africa. Land-locked countries such as Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad meet a substantial proportion of their fish consumption needs with imports from Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal. Dried and smoked fish from Mali is also exported to Burkina Faso while Gambia and the coastal regions of Guinea, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau provide fish for the areas in short supply in Guinea, Mali, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Retailers
Even though many collectors and wholesalers in towns often sell directly to consumers, in most African countries there is a group of predominantly women traders who engage in retailing at fixed sites in markets or in their communities. It would in fact be more appropriate to describe their activity as micro-retailing because they sell in very small units (usually less than the conventional units of litre or kilogram) often in response to household demands. These women retailers rarely purchase from producers in rural areas but rely mainly on supplies from collectors, wholesalers or other larger retailers. They have extremely limited financial resources and their working capital seldom exceeds CFAF 25 000, an amount which does not permit them to purchase from rural assembly markets.
Traditional butchers are the main retailers in the meat sector. They buy from wholesalers at abattoirs and resell in markets, often under unhygienic conditions, with the meat exposed to flies and the sun. Others engaged in the meat retail trade include:
Fresh fish is commonly retailed either in portable iceboxes or without ice (in which case the fish is sold in the morning). It is also sold, but less commonly so, from permanent shops with refrigerators and from trucks which travel around suburbs. Some cities, for example Dakar, Conakry and Abidjan, have small fishing ports which double as fish markets where fishermen sell their catch to traders and housewives, especially in the evenings when the boats come in. Quite often traders who buy from fishermen set up temporary shops on the spot to resell their purchases. In all markets in African towns, regardless of size, there are many small retailers (mostly women) who sell smoked and dried fish (in heaps) from small tables or mats.
Transporters play a major role in moving produce and traders from production to consumption areas. Apart from importers and some wholesalers, most traders do not have their own means of transport and have to rely on trucks provided by a well organized network of private hauliers found in most towns in Africa. Transporters usually have unions consisting of vehicle owners, although non-owner drivers sometimes have their own unions. The trucks are usually based at central haulage depots in towns and cities, thus ensuring easy access.
A new category has appeared in this sector in some countries and is growing steadily - that of "renters", who are mostly drivers with extensive knowledge and experience in the field but who do not own vehicles. They usually hire trucks from vehicle owners, which they use with considerable discretion throughout the rental period. The appearance of these renters is attributable to the fact that the vehicles are often owned by traders who cannot devote sufficient time to managing the transport business. Hired drivers tend to be poorly paid and therefore cheat their employers. Recourse to a renter represents an answer to these problems and a way of assuring a reasonable income.
For practically all products (cereals, vegetables, fruits, tubers, meat and fish) processing is an important link in the urban supply chain. Processing is done manually as well as on small-, medium- and large-scale levels. Manual processing is carried out mainly by women in rural areas using simple, traditional technology and equipment such as the mortar and pestle for hulling cereals and pounding tubers into flour and grindstone for crushing grain. In nearly all African countries, most of the food consumed is processed manually.
Small-scale cereal processing is carried out with mills and hulling machines to produce flour and extract bran to facilitate the preparation of food in keeping with eating habits. Medium-scale processing involving the production of quality flour tends to be located in the larger towns but is currently being promoted in rural areas largely as a result of development assistance provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Large-scale cereal processing has always been confined to a few public corporations and state-owned mills such as SODERIZ in Côte d'Ivoire and SONACOR in Burkina Faso and the breweries. Processing activities in the case of vegetables remain underdeveloped and are dominated by underequipped small-scale artisans who lack adequate knowledge of market possibilities.
Meat processing units are practically non-existent, except for very few specialist "butcher-delicatessens" in capital cities. Fishermen and their families often undertake fish processing, which is confined to drying and smoking due to a lack of financial resources and adequate knowledge of markets.
Banks play an indirect role in the supply of food to towns and cities by providing funding for the activities of various operators in the chain. In most African countries, however, their role has been limited to financing large-scale cereal processing enterprises and other food importers. They very seldom grant loans for local produce trade and only when specific lines of credit are established by donors or governments to encourage the marketing of food produce and/or when such loans are guaranteed by donors and governments.
To overcome this financing problem, a number of agricultural production and marketing projects undertaken in Africa involve the provision of credit at preferential rates of interest. New forms of lending are also being piloted in some countries, some involving credit unions. These pilot schemes, which usually involve lending to small-scale operators without demanding the traditional collateral security but relying on solidarity, are meeting with varying degrees of success.
1.3.1 Central government
1.3.2 Equalization fund
1.3.3 Quality control
1.3.4 Customs division
1.3.5 Chambers of commerce and/or agriculture
1.3.6 Law and order divisions
1.3.7 Market management
The number and size of public bodies involved in food marketing vary from country to country. They include central government agencies and local/district authorities.
Ministry of trade
In most African countries, the ministry of trade is extensively and directly involved in importing as well as in the local supply and distribution of food. It is responsible for drawing up import programmes and licensing regulations pertaining to these programmes. It also more or less controls public corporations and parastatals involved in importing, local marketing and distribution. The trade ministry is also charged with formulating and applying trade regulations, for example, in Côte d'Ivoire, Togo and Niger it is involved in price controls and the control of fraud and trade malpractice within the framework of laws on fair trade.
Ministry of agriculture - animal husbandry and fishery divisions
In all African countries the animal husbandry division is in charge of defining and supervising livestock development policies. It provides assistance to livestock owners for disease control and is responsible for health control in abattoirs and butcher shops. It also regulates livestock markets and facilitates the supply of live animals to major consumption centres.
The fishery division has a similar role. In countries where there are large public and quasi-public fishing corporations, the fishery division supervises their management.
Ministry of finance
The ministry of finance in most African countries exerts considerable influence over trade policies, sometimes even taking over functions that were previously under the jurisdiction of the ministry of trade. This influence can be attributed to the direct involvement of the ministry of finance in negotiations for donor assistance (especially structural adjustment loans) and the implementation of contingent reforms including privatization, liberalization, devaluation and restructuring of the civil service. In Senegal, for instance, the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of Finance administers price controls and laws on fair trade. It prescribes types and rates of taxation levied by central government on activities in the food trade.
This fund is still found in many African countries, although its role in food supplies following trade liberalization has been on a steady decline. In most cases the fund was set up for purchasing locally, importing and distributing staples (rice, sugar, oil, etc.). The price of such staples was fixed primarily to ensure affordability to low-income households. Duties were usually levied on other imports (including vehicles, alcoholic beverages, textiles, etc.) in order to offset losses incurred in the sale of staples.
In many countries the objectives of this fund are pursued in conjunction with the goals of the Price Stabilization Fund, which seeks to stabilize producer prices by purchasing, storing and exporting domestic agricultural produce. In practice these funds have often deviated from their goals, with the equalization fund functioning as a financial service specializing in the collection of equalization taxes for the national budget, and the stabilization fund as a source of funding for major investment projects totally unconnected with farming.
In most countries the quality control division is the public organization responsible for ensuring that produce sold on the domestic market is fit for consumption (date of expiry, absence of mould and weevils, etc.) and satisfies export or import regulations. It also collects related taxes for the central government or the public body with a monopoly over marketing export produce and, in some cases, the chamber of commerce.
Customs duties play a strategic role in African economies as a vital source of central government revenue. These duties also have considerable effect on the rate and volume of food supplies. Duties are often used as instruments to control food imports in order to minimize the impact of shortfalls in domestic production. In many countries, including Guinea and Mali, customs departments have often been involved in a number of fraudulent activities. To minimize this problem a number of countries have attempted to computerize the operations of the customs department with the assistance of such projects as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Sydonia Project.
The level of organization and effectiveness of these associations varies from country to country. Until recently most of these bodies, which include traders, farmers, craftsmen and manufacturers, operated at the service of the government with chairmen being appointed by the state. Since economic liberalization, however, there has been a growing trend towards separation, with the creation of separate chambers for each sector and the democratic election of executives, including the chairmen.
The role of these bodies in supplying food to cities is indirect and is as yet fairly ineffective. Their goal is basically to provide an organization for traders so as to facilitate useful contacts and also enhance their capacity to defend sectoral interests. They also offer a particularly favourable framework for dialogue with the government on issues concerning the role of the private sector in the national economy. It is expected that when these chambers become better organized, they will be more effective in enhancing the capacity of the state and traders to improve planning with regard to food quantities and flows.
Police departments, and sometimes the army, play a direct role in the supply of food to towns and cities. In most sub-Saharan African countries there are numerous police and military checkpoints on highways and along national borders. These road blocks, which are set up to control the movement of goods and people, represent a major obstacle to the efficient supply of local and imported goods since they increase opportunities for illicit taxes to be extracted from traders.
Each market in villages, towns and cities has its own management team which collects tolls and taxes on behalf of district and city authorities as well as for central revenue agencies. They assign sites to traders and are responsible for hygiene and security in the markets. They also provide an informal system for resolving conflicts among the various traders in the market. The manager is usually appointed by the local or district authorities (sometimes the ministry of trade or finance), but in some cases a trader may be elected by the other traders in the market.
In many African countries support projects for the food marketing sector financed by foreign donors (involving bilateral cooperation agreements or multilateral agencies like UNDP, EU, WFP, FAO, etc.) play an indirect role in FSDSs. This role may include technical and logistical support, training for personnel from the ministries concerned and chambers of commerce, assistance to farmers' associations, establishment of lines for credit, and the importation and distribution of food aid.
NGOs also play an indirect role in the supply of food to cities. Their resources are generally more modest than those of large-scale projects financed by bilateral and multilateral donors, but they are closer to those actually working in the sector (for instance the Afrique Verte project in Burkina Faso).
