Staple Foods
The Regional Opportunity
To achieve its mandate, COMPETE supports efforts to increase the volume and value of staple foods traded within in East and Central Africa with an emphasis on increasing small holder access to regional commercial markets. COMPETE works to address existing challenges associated with increasing smallholder participation in the regional value chain including:
- A lack of structured trading mechanisms linked to regional markets and accessible by smallholders.
- A lack of sufficient quantities of aggregated smallholder-produced grain meeting regional quality standards and downstream market requirements.
- Lack of quality incentives to award smallholder producers for producing higher quality grain
- A lack of sufficient village-level drying and storage facilities available for smallholder producers
- A lack of financing available to cover both production and storage costs for staple foods
- Lack of market linkages with commercial buyers of cross border grain
- Lack of timely regional market information and trade data
- Inconsistent trade policies and arbitrary trade and export bans
COMPETE’s Strategic Approach
COMPETE’s multi-pronged approach to increasing the regional trade of staple foods is based on the recommendations of a regional staple foods competitiveness strategy developed in year 1. COMPETE is:
- Taking a leadership role in promoting structured trading systems (STS) in the region. STS are characterized by the adoption of formal trading practices such as the use of formal commercial contracts, using financial products such as warehouse receipt systems (WRS) and purchase order financing, and promoting grain trading systems that use more formal price discovery mechanisms such as commodity exchanges.
- Supporting efforts to increase market information on opportunities for regional trade and price information to increase buyer and seller awareness of tradable staple foods.
- Supporting efforts to improve the enabling environment for the trade of staple foods and
- Supporting the private sector through the EAGC to advocate for an open and free market to trade staple foods and increase member awareness of how to trade grain.