Regional Markets

Regional Markets for Local Development
the introduction of tissue culture 11 giving farmers access to a disease-free and highly productive
planting material. As a result, productivity surpassed 50 tons per hectare showing
the potential of new technologies for intensification of production (Mudyazvivi and
Maunze 2010). The banana case is one of a few where the private sector took a leadership
role, developing inclusive business practices with smallholders and linking up with other
actors, including government. The private-public partnership pooled together efforts to
integrate smallholders sustainably in a commercial value chain. Partnerships with agrodealers
were also realised: they obtained inputs from wholesalers and sold these at a commission
(about 5% of price). This not only revived the provision of inputs which had
collapsed in the past decade, but also directly responded to the demands of smallholders.
Key lessons
The banana case demonstrates how smallholders can be included in remunerative foodcommodity
based value chains and improve their livelihoods. It shows that integrating
smallholders in more lucrative markets requires a long-term outlook, external development
support as well as commitment and leadership by private sector players. Securing
commitment for this ‘inclusive business model’ requires that facilitating organisations
(such as SNV) also elaborate ’what needs to be done and how’. Too often development
organisations assume that providing financial resources to private sector and smallholders
is enough. This case shows that having the ingredients does not make a meal—some cooking
is also needed (in this case: market research and capacity building, bringing together
different stakeholders and linking smallholders with the private sector, strengthening producer
groups and training farmers on best practices in banana production).
This case stresses the need for external resources to accelerate farmer-market linkages,
especially in a context of stagnant economic performance as in Zimbabwe. Previous
value chain initiatives mainly focused on niche export markets. Yet, this case shows that
local rather than international actors can be a vehicle for development. In a country
crippled by economic crisis, public resources to invest in a sector like banana remain
limited and others need to fill the gap.
During the development of the project it was unclear how increased pressure from
competitors would affect the interest of the value chain champion (the Matanuska
Company) to invest in and provide overall leadership for smallholder engagement in
the banana chain. It remains important to manage the risk of creating a monopoly,
though the experience here shows that that risk may not be very high in an economic
environment that reacts to opportunities.
11 Also known as in vitro culture, it is the cultivation of plants or parts of plants on an artificial culture medium
under sterile conditions, with the goal to grow disease-free planting material or to produce clones of a particular plant.
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