Featured project – The dynamics of farming across Africa

Sagaci Research keeps growing its expertise and knowledge base in the agricultural sector, one of the main pillars for Africa’s economic development. We recently executed a study for a leading multinational company, in order to gain insights on the entire value chain of several crops and understand the way in which farmers use agricultural products and their attitudes towards them. Research was carried out in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Ethiopia, exploring 15 different crops as diverse as cocoa, rice, tobacco, mango and Ethiopian teff.

The study explored the diverse dynamics of farming and agronomic practices across the continent, ranging from crop type per country, geographic locations of each crop, farm makeup, mechanization, commercial and employment contracts through to value chains and end consumers.

Our field researchers campaigned into frontier and remote lands to interview farmers about their choices of seeds and the most commonly used seed and crop protection practices and products. Unique insights were also extracted from conducting more than 120 expert interviews with agronomists, academics, government agencies and other leaders in the agricultural sector.

The results of the survey allowed us to strengthen our expertise in agriculture, expand our perspective on both mainstream and niche crops and practices, as well as to quantify relevant and hardly available indicators about the different markets and sub-markets, such as volume, market size, competition intensity and market share.