This paper traces the trajectories of successful commercial smallholders operating under differing sets of market institutions. Analysis focuses on maize, cotton, and horticulture, three widely marketed crops with strikingly different market institutions. Maize receives intensive government...

This working paper explores the prospects for regional maize trade in helping to stabilize food availability and prices in Zambia. It reviews these general prospects within the maize economy of southern Africa. Given the important regional differences in Zambia’s food economy, it explores...

Zambia’s population clusters tightly in cities along the north-south line of rail and in the primarily rural areas of Eastern Province (Figure 1). Staple food consumption and purchases are similarly concentrated in these heavily populated clusters (Figures 4 and 5). Across the border, several...

Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). How to ensure input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate. This paper examines the performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia. Both...

With cotton sector reform in much of SSA a decade old, it is now possible to review the empirical record and begin drawing lessons from experience. This paper assesses the record of five countries in southern and eastern Africa: Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. In four of...

Research results from SIMA-Department of Statistics and Department of Policy Analysis MADER-Directorate of Economics