Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Skip to content

ADG channels:

Information by sector: Agriculture

Sub navigation

ADG TOOLBOX

Value chains

Chain empowerment: supporting African farmers to develop markets

The book describes two basic strategies that groups of farmers can use to improve their incomes: vertical and horizontal integration, providing 19 case studies of African farmers adopting these strategies.

Vertical integration means taking on additional activities in the value chain, such as processing or grading produce.  Horizontal integration means becoming more involved in managing the value chain itself, by farmers' improving their access to and management of information and increasing their knowledge of the market and their control over contracts, or their cooperation with other actors in the chain.

This book contains 19 case studies showing how groups of farmers throughout Africa have adopted one or both of these strategies to improve their incomes. It demonstrates how development organizations have helped them do this and provides success and failures. It also shows the need to invest in improving the quality of existing products, developing new products, establishing market linkages, and building farmer organization and capacity.

The book is available for download in chapters from this site

 

Footer: