Competiveness of Maize Value Chains for Smallholders in West Africa: Case of Benin, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire

The paper analyses the entire value chains of the maize food crop in targeted countries. It identifies the maize actors and related business linkages from input supply to product markets, the governance of the chain, mainly the decision making to decrease the transaction costs, the chain performance including efficiency in value-added, gender equity and sustainability and the need for capacity building in various segments along the maize value chains in Benin, Ghana, and Càte d’Ivoire. The main objective of the paper is to contribute to better livelihoods of rural poor through empowerment and gender equitable access to maize value chain opportunities, inputs and product markets through technical backstopping and capacity strengthening so that smallholders understand and participate in the value chains and benefit from it. The following specific objectives are to i) identify the constraints and opportunities and linkages between actors across agro-ecological zones through country and regional level baselines; ii) develop an analytical support toolkit to analyze competitiveness, trends and outlook of maize taking into account climate change and policy shifts at micro, meso and macro level and iii) strengthen the capacity of regional maize value chain actors in the targeted countries. A systematic sampling of one out of every three successive shed was used to select wholesalers whereas snowballing sampling was used to select the assemblers, retailers and processors. The paper informs on the status of technologies application along maize value chains in selected countries and analyzes the economical profitability and/or profit maximization of maize value chains.