The Role of Grassroots Institutions in Agriculture in Sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

Grassroots institutions (GRIs) are mechanisms available to smallholder farmers to coordinate activities both horizontally (among members) and vertically (between members and other value chain actors, inside or outside the community). These organizations can reduce transaction costs by creating economies of scale for input supply, technological transfer, or joint marketing, or by facilitating concerted action between farmers (Staal et al. 1998). Established in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the colonial period in the form of cooperatives, GRIs became a means of promoting production and facilitating the collection of cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, tobacco, cotton, and vanilla for export. Although farmers were already organized in groups to address social and community constraints, the colonial period leveraged these indigenous institutions to introduce market orientation functions and formalized them by establishing bureaucratic links with local and central authorities.