Zambian Farmers’ Access to Maize Markets

Smallholder farmers’ access to markets and agricultural support services has been a major concern of Zambian policy makers. As with many governments in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Zambian government’s agricultural policies, particularly for maize, have fundamentally been conceived of as a response to perceived market failure and weak access to markets for rural smallholder farmers. However, the conventional wisdom of poor market access is based on extremely limited empirical evidence. This study is motivated by the need to overcome this paucity of empirical evidence and provide policy makers with an up-to-date assessment of smallholder farmers’ market access conditions for maize, the primary food grain in Zambia.