"Many developing countries continue to face barriers to market access that limit their ability to reap the full benefits of trade. Agricultural producers encounter high tariffs, quotas and subsidies that constrain their export potential.” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2001.

Over two decades later, the observation still holds. Across developing economies, market access continues to determine who remains at the periphery of the global food economy and who benefits from agricultural trade. The challenge is particularly consequential for Africa, and especially sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), smallholders working up to 10 hectares manage roughly 80 percent of the farmland in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. For millions, producing food does not translate into reliable income. Too often they face high transaction and transport costs, fragmented supply chains, limited storage and processing, weak market information, climate shocks and inadequate access to finance.

A farmer may do everything right including plant improved seeds, protect soil health, manage pests sustainably, and produce a crop of real commercial and nutritional value. Yet if that farmer cannot meet market requirements, aggregate sufficient volumes, or finance the journey from field to buyer, productivity gains rarely become better livelihoods.

Farmers must be connected to markets

Africa’s food-systems transformation, then, is not merely a production challenge. It is a market-architecture challenge.

For years, agricultural transformation has been measured largely by quantities produced. Real transformation, however, requires a shift from volume toward inclusive value chains, reliable off-take agreements and functional market linkages that secure profitability and durable rural livelihoods as the AGRA Africa Agriculture Status Report argued a decade ago.

That is precisely the conversation now converging on Kigali. From 31 August to 4 September, 2026Rwanda hosts the 20th Africa Food Systems Forum, gathering more than 5,000 leaders, investors and innovators from over 50 countries under the theme "Investing in Africa’s Agri-Food Systems: Nourishing nations, growing jobs, building resilience.”

The Forum is organised its agenda around five priorities: investment and finance; food security and nutrition; climate resilience; youth and digital innovation; and trade, markets and value chains. The framing is deliberate: agricultural modernisation is now a jobs and industrialisation strategy, not merely a food-security concern.

It is within this market architecture that institutions such as the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT work to connect smallholders to structured, higher-value markets, strengthening producer–buyer relationships, supporting aggregation and value addition, improving quality, and using data and digital tools to make value chains more efficient and transparent.

What really works?

Through the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA), the Alliance built a ‘commodity corridors’ approach that links production, distribution and consumption hubs into structured flows of market-preferred beans and promoting demand-driven varieties with the traits traders and consumers value.

Its LINK Methodology, in turn, uses a structured set of tools from value-chain mapping to business-model design and testing, to narrow the asymmetries between small producers and buyers, opening dialogue and surfacing issues that are otherwise hard to raise.

Where finance and markets meet

Yet market linkages alone are not enough. Behind every farmer who cannot reach a market often stands one who could not finance the attempt. Improved seeds, fertiliser, irrigation, mechanisation, storage, transport, processing and compliance with standards all demand capital usually before a single sale is made. Productivity depends on investment, investment on finance, and finance on the confidence that returns will materialise. That confidence rests, in turn, on reliable and predictable markets.

Finance and market access are therefore one problem, not two. Credit without a dependable market is a trap: a farmer may borrow to produce more, only to watch the harvest spoil or sell at a loss. A market opportunity without capital is equally hollow: a farmer may know exactly what buyers want, yet lack the means to supply the volume and quality required.

Smallholders remain underserved for reasons that are largely structural. They often lack collateral and formal financial records; production is fragmented and seasonal; climate variability magnifies lending risk; transaction costs are high; insurance is scarce; and the links between financial institutions and value chains are weak. To a commercial lender, the smallholder can look like pure risk.

The most promising remedies tie financing directly to markets. Cooperative and aggregation models, contract farming and off-take agreements give lenders the assurance of a confirmed buyer. Value-chain and warehouse-based financing let contracted or stored produce serve as security. Blended finance and de-risking instruments crowd in private capital, insurance absorbs shocks and digital tools extend credit against verified transactions rather than land titles. Each works precisely because it links the loan to a real market.

Market-building is also a public task, and procurement is among the most powerful yet underused instruments available. Schools, hospitals and social-protection programmes need large, recurring quantities of food. Treated as more than a nutrition intervention, a school-meals programme becomes predictable demand for locally produced, nutritious food — giving farmers a reason to plant, aggregators an assured market, and processors the confidence to invest in value addition. The aim is to build local food economies and make diversification commercially viable.

Access to higher-value markets depends heavily on quality, safety, traceability, standards and Good Agricultural Practices. To smallholders these can look like barriers; with the right systems they become gateways with digital tools recording production histories, verifying transactions and strengthening traceability across fragmented supply chains, narrowing information gaps that long kept small producers on the margins.

The African Continental Free Trade Area offers a powerful framework for expanding intra-African trade, but regional integration must go beyond agreements between governments. It has to reach the farmer, the cooperative, the processor, the trader and the consumer.

And as African leaders and food-systems stakeholders gather in Kigali, Rwanda for the Africa Food Systems Forum, the conversation must move beyond increasing food production to building better markets systems that make it worthwhile for farmers to produce, add value and earn sustainable livelihoods.

Dr. Eliud Birachi is a Senior Scientist and Market Economist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT while Teddy Kaberuka is an economic analyst specializing in development, resource economics and AI strategist.