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Markets, marketing boards, and cooperatives in Africa: issues in adjustment policy |
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The structural adjustment efforts under way since the early 1980s have
emphasized the liberalization of agricultural prices and markets and
have led to a vigorous debate about the appropriate roles of the
private and public sectors. This paper examines the causes of state
intervention prior to independence as well as post-independence
experience with marketing parastatals and cooperatives in Cameroon,
Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania. This analysis is followed
by an overview of the content and outcomes of the marketing and pricing
liberalization programs. The focus is on the pricing and marketing of
traditional export and food crops, which in these countries constitute
well over 90 percent of the area harvested, value added and employment
created in agriculture. The paper is not concerned with dairy,
livestock or horticultural crops - areas in which government
intervention has been less obtrusive and in which the private sector
has played an important role.
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