Regional Markets

4 Opportunities for development
The fact that improving food quality is directly connected to production investments—
which ultimately need to be reflected in higher prices—raises the following question:
Who is covering the cost of the investment? In many of the cases it was not clear who
ultimately paid the additional costs, and whether these additional costs were worth the
investment, i.e. whether producers could secure premium prices and sustainable access
to profitable markets. If producers continue to rely on spot markets then quality differentiation
might not bring significant added value. And the question is also: ‘Is the food
commodity produced worth the effort of going through such a process of investing in
quality, premium prices and certification’?
Quality through certification and premium prices does not seem to be a focus in the framework
of regional market development, in contrast to most export-oriented initiatives with
their stringent quality criteria. Looking at the cases, quality concerns were indeed mostly
taken along for exported products only, such as bananas from Zimbabwe to South Africa.
In the continuum below (Figure 4.4) we looked at the extent to which these quality
criteria were considered important. Not surprisingly, those commodities that partly also
supply export markets (e.g., the cotton and banana cases from Zimbabwe, and coffee
produced in Tanzania for the export market) are guided by food quality in their value
chain development. ‘Low’ in the graph implies that the project has a low focus on quality.
‘Medium’ indicates a broadening towards supplying the national market with less
quality considerations and ‘high’ points to a willingness to serving export markets with
high quality demands. Not surprisingly, the coffee case of Tanzania and the Fairtrade
cases are found at the right end side. TAHA with its horticultural produce and the
Zimbabwean banana project are moving towards that direction.
Figure 4.4 Focus on quality
NGOMA
FoSHoL
Senegal
TAHA
ZIM banana
Coffee TZ
FT
LOW
HIGH
C:AVA
RUDI
Cotton ZIM
Fig 4.4 Continuum showing the extent to which quality criteria were considered important.
151