Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Food Security Group

Introduction

Motivation

The rapid expansion of agri-food value chains (in Nigeria and other developing countries) over the past few decades has been fueled by the investments of numerous micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the midstream and downstream segments. These segments include wholesale, logistics, processing, and retail. Together, the investments influence the availability, affordability, and safety of healthy and nutritious foods such as fish and vegetables. MSMEs face significant obstacles that can hinder their operations, expansion, and productivity. Nevertheless, researchers and policymakers have paid insufficient attention to MSMEs in the midstream and downstream segments of value chains. The RSM2SNF project aims to fill this gap by working with MSMEs along the value chains for fish, tomatoes, and green leafy vegetables to understand the structure, conduct, and performance of these value chains and ultimately to support MSMEs to provide affordable, safe, and nutritious foods.

Objectives

Toward this end, a “lay of the land” or rapid reconnaissance study for the fish value chain was conducted in Ebonyi State. The objectives were:

1. to understand the structure of the value chain and how actors at different nodes interact with each other;
2. to understand how patterns of behavior vary according to the scale of the enterprise;
3. to understand what stakeholders operating in the value chain perceive to be the key challenges and opportunities in the fish subsector; and
4. to develop insights that will inform the design of a market study of fish markets, as well as a micro-level study of the fish value chain using “stacked surveys” administered to MSMEs operating at various segments of the value chain.