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

Agrifood value chains (AVCs) in Nigeria have expanded rapidly in recent decades. This process has been driven, in part, by enormous aggregate investment on the part of the many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that operate all along the AVCs (Reardon et al. 2019). These include producers, input suppliers, transporters, aggregators, processors, wholesalers, and vendors, among others. While these MSMEs together form the backbone of Nigeria’s food system, they face significant challenges that impede their operations, growth, and productivity. These challenges span the micro level, such as limited technical capacity of MSME owners/managers and limited access to finance (Liverpool-Tasie et al. 2020); the meso level, such as poor organization and management of markets or clusters, congestion, security challenges, and limited access to water, cold storage, and other amenities (Reardon et al. 2021); and the macro level, such as poor road and rail infrastructure or limited supply of electricity that significantly increase the costs of operation, as well as policies that make it difficult for MSMEs to be established or formalized (e.g., multiple taxation, bureaucratic and unclear processes). Macro challenges also include the weak regulatory framework used to oversee and monitor the operations of many of Africa’s food systems (Liverpool-Tasie et al. 2020; Liverpool-Tasie et al. 2021). Together, these micro, meso, and macro factors can significantly shape the incentives of MSMEs and affect their ability to provide affordable, safe, and nutritious foods to consumers.