2SCALE Thematic Papers Not By Technology and Money Alone

Overview of the stories and related cross-cutting themes PPPs: Commodity-country Relationship building PO and SME Soya – Benin Cluster Market & Farm-firm ✻ Functional CS enabling technical improvements Organisa- tional Empowerment Sustainability of support services Gender and youth ✻ Soya – Ghana ✻ ✻ ✻ Rice – Benin ✻ ✻ ✻ Rice – Nigeria ✻ ✻ Vegetables – Benin ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ Vegetables – Nigeria Cassava – Nigeria ✻ Sorghum – Nigeria 1 ✻ Pineapple – Benin ✻ Sesame – Mali Maize – Nigeria ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ Dairy – Nigeria Maize – Benin ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ HPW – Ghana Maize – Mali ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ 1 This partnership is not part of the 2SCALE programme but of the Sorghum and Millet in the Sahel (SMS) project, funded by the BMG foundation; the SMS project uses the 2SCALE methodology including ICRA’s CS approach and involves ICRA’s trainer-mentor associate Lazarus Yarima (author of the story). tion and insights into market trends, which allow the PO to negotiate fair deals with the company, and in time even without the direct backing of the partnership faci- litator or trainer-mentor. Support services need to be sustainable without project support Six of the fifteen stories report on the business actors’ interest in continuing with providing support and coach- ing services to the ABCs beyond 2SCALE. This is how- ever not a straightforward process given the fact that all coaches’ activities have until now mainly been fund- ed by the 2SCALE programme. As presented in the Dairy-Nigeria story, “external” coaches are now handing over tasks to “internal” coaches, and at the same time finding a way to commercialise their role within the business of the clusters. For example, by becoming a part-time input provider or milk transporter, they can remain associated with the cluster and at the same time be in the position to continue to provide functional business support services when needed by the cluster. The Maize-Nigeria story also relates to this theme, as farmers and other cluster actors develop strategies to be able to pay for CS services themselves. The issue of integrating coaching services into the cost structure of the value chain (“embedding” the services) is also described in terms of internal coaches in the Pineapple- Benin and Maize-Mali stories, where plans are taking shape to deduct a small amount of the price of raw ma- terials to fund coaching services. Women and youths make good business too Six of the fifteen stories specifically provide a gender or youth employment perspective on the development of the agribusiness, both important themes to rural agri- cultural development processes. The Sorghum-Nigeria story shows the importance of women farmer cooper- atives and their negotiation power with the sorghum aggregators. Two stories show an evolution towards strong female-headed SMEs, for parboiled rice (Rice- Benin) and soya processing (Soya-Ghana). Two other stories describe how enhanced growing practices and related business development in Benin vegetables and Nigerian rice sectors can help youth return to the village and become entrepreneurs. The editors, Mundie Salm, Marie-Jo Dugué and Toon Defoer 6

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