Innovative Practice Kenya: Access to high value markets by smallholders of African indigenous Vegetables

From the recent past, consumers have become increasingly aware of the nutritional and medicinal value of African indigenous vegetables. This has caused a rise in demand especially in major urban centres. The supply of these vegetables has however not matched this growing demand. Most farmers are semi commercially oriented poor farmers, are not organized, and lack inputs and skills to enable them to satisfy the dynamic market requirements. They are not able to access high value markets such as supermarkets and are often exploited by middlemen. Responding to the changing consumption patterns and market opportunities occasioned by the growing demand for these vegetables in the urban centres, a number of farmers in collaboration with development agencies and government have come together to form producer groups to get around their constraints and meet the conditions in the markets.

It is on this backdrop that this study was undertaken with the principal objective of identifying how small-scale farmers could better be integrated in the emerging and restructured markets such as supermarkets. The study identifies the factors attributed to successful inclusion in the chain supplying the dynamic markets and estimates the cost and benefits of the inclusion.

This publication forms part of the Regoverning Markets project.