Agricultural markets in West Africa: Frontiers, agribusiness and social differentiation

Abstract

Agricultural development policies and analyses have sought to reduce direct state intervention in order to promote free markets, yet rarely investigate the nature of African agribusiness and commodity markets. West African history shows a pattern of forest rents, frontier colonisation, boom and bust cycles and limited scope for diversifying production. Food markets present some opportunities, but are also characterised by unequal power in production and exchange State decline has left farmers to obtain technical inputs from private agribusinesses, but often on poor terms that heighten inequality and insecurity. © Institute of Development Studies.