potential for actors at highly concentrated stages to exert market power to the detriment of
smallholder production growth. Such organizations may even act as subcontractors or partners to
multinationals, thereby creating a system that captures the benefits of scale economies in
international trade while tailoring specific services to local farmers' conditions.13
5.7 Invest in Local Analytical Capacity
The payoffs to market reforms have been most effective when as part of the reform process, there
has been a concerted effort to strengthen domestic capacity for ongoing research and analysis to
inform the reform process. Because of the paucity of data on food systems in most sub-Saharan
African (SSA) countries, most reforms are necessarily designed initially on the basis of scanty
empirical information. The strengthening of domestic analysis capacity allows a mechanism for
ongoing monitoring of food system performance in response to the reforms and provides a
mechanism for mid-course corrections as researchers uncover new empirical information. Given
the ongoing nature of the reforms, it is unlikely that outside consultants alone can assure the
continuity of monitoring, analysis and evaluation needed to help guide the reforms.
Lasting market and related policy change depends critically on governments’ actual belief in the
analysis supporting the reforms. There is ample evidence that governments that have reluctantly
undertaken market reform programs have reversed them and reimposed the old system of price
and trade controls with the advent of drought or other shocks (Jayne and Jones 1997). Local
analytical units are often seen as bringing more local knowledge to the analysis, being less
ideologically driven, and having greater sensitivity to domestic policy concerns than analysis
conceived and driven by donor interests using expatriate analysts. At the same time, cooperative
analyses involving both local units and external researchers are often valued, as the involvement of
an internationally known research organization often gives local decision makers greater
confidence in the scientific soundness of the analysis. The demand for, and credibility of, food
policy analysis to guide market development is enhanced by a collaborative research process
driven by local researchers and government analysts who take “ownership” of the research agenda
and findings.
13For example, in Mali the union of cotton farmers, the multinational cotton company, and the state are
all signatories to the contract-plan governing the management of the cotton subsector in the country and all
receive a share of the cotton company's profits.
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