While increasing access to well-functioning markets for high-value agricultural products is one key component of agricultural and economic development, an equally important component is ensuring that smallholder producers, particularly women, have the capacity to take advantage of this increased access. Strengthening the developing world’s local and regional capacity to effectively engage in high-value agricultural markets depends on the availability of quality research and tools that allow policymakers to analyze agricultural markets and then use that analysis to enact country-specific policies that will help their most vulnerable producers achieve greater market access.

The African Agricultural Markets Programme (AAMP) provides policymakers with up-to-date research regarding staple food markets in eastern and southern Africa, as well as offering training courses in methods for analyzing agricultural markets. IFPRI has launched a new website to disseminate presentations, background papers, and training materials. This documentation aims to enhance regional capacity, policy dialogue, and coordination of agricultural markets in the region.

AAMP targeted nine countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), but the analytical methods featured on the website will be useful to a wide range of users. With a collection of both country-specific and generalized documentation, the site can provide useful information and tools for policymakers to engage in market analysis to assist their own country’s agricultural producers.