Pitfalls and potential pathways to commercialization of indigenous food crops, fruits, and vegetables in Africa

Abstract

All foods have local origins, but their commercialization and global acceptance remain challenging. Agricultural commercialization involves producing agricultural products for financial gain and market purposes beyond family consumption. Indigenous foods have vast societal benefits, including cultural, employment, medicinal, food security-related, nutritional, and financial. However, indigenous food consumption and demand are constantly declining because exotic foods are replacing them, despite recent campaigns for their increased commercialization. The study investigates the challenges associated with indigenous food commercialization, possible pathways to commercialization, and the role of the government in commercializing indigenous food. It offers a hypothesized structure and essential blueprint for sustainable indigenous food (crop) commercialization. The methodology involved a review of the literature using various search engines, scholarly sites, and print books, combining quantitative and qualitative research. Scaling indigenous food for sustainable commercialization beyond dependency on the wild product takes specific steps, including domestication, certification, and effective government-private collaboration. Policies to improve the sustainability of indigenous food are urgently required to save them from extinction and meet future demand. Many indigenous foods are hindered by low-status perception, poor value addition, inadequate knowledge of their potential, lack of market penetration, and global acceptability challenges. Indigenous food commercialization lacks a holistic and systematic approach involving careful planning, procedural steps, and an aggressive market-spreading mechanism for global adoption. An excellent strategic relationship between government and stakeholders is a prerequisite for indigenous food commercialization, but the onus is on the government to commit to indigenous food commercialization programs.