Africa’s Elusive but untapped Market
The invisible small holder farmers
Last December, I attempted to come up with a strategy to increase crop production in my rural village. I persuaded the nearest farmers’ training center to come up with a flexible training module for my target group. Many rural people in Sub Saharan Africa are farmers by chance; that is, it is not a choice taken out of a menu of options. I am now grappling with the challenge to identify candidates for my project.
In my last blog, I had challenged the business community to increase awareness about their products to enable farmers make informed choices. One threw the challenge back at me and asked: how many small holder farmers are in Africa? An old adage asserts that one cannot manage what they cannot measure.
It is not easy to fathom whether the increase in cell phone uptake in Africa was driven by prior knowledge that every villager will want to talk to their siblings. In the 90s, it appeared to be an upper class gadget until when strategists figured out the needs of its amorphous market. The small holder farming community remain just that, amorphous; at best they are a moving target. The person you meet as a farmer today may just be on his/her way to school; he/she may be a retiree; a school drop out struggling to migrate out of the village to the city and an aged surrendered couple. The cell phone offers value of connecting people and saving transaction costs. Supposing agro-based companies offered a value proposition for “better life;” an estimated 750 million people in Africa might just develop interest in their products.