News regarding current work on the implementation of a market information systems in Ethiopia, released by Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wagenigen UR – LEI) on 24 Feb 2009.

From 24 to 31 January, Olga van der Valk and Monika Sopov (Wageningen International) visited Ziway and Meki, two villages in the Rift Valley south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Their goal was to develop a Market Information System (MIS) for small-scale outgrowers of green beans, whose production is contracted by an exporter to Europe. The design of an MIS was requested by a project with CFC funding aiming at promoting small-scale growers’ participation in exports. In a workshop with local stakeholders, the findings of an earlier assessment on market information sources and communication lines were discussed.

An MIS is an instrument to reduce market insecurity by providing more transparency in the market. Other instruments are the implementation of (innovative) technology and horizontal and vertical market coordination to strengthen market position and to combat seasonality. To further define the MIS, stakeholders were asked to prioritise their demand for information: whether related to export or domestic markets; whether on daily-changing information such as prices and supply or on market-technical data for the development of marketing strategies.

Neither stakeholders nor farmers currently work with or have a view on long-term marketing strategies to develop the small-scale horticulture sector. This makes it difficult to prioritise the marketing information needed to design and operate an MIS. The proposal by the workshop stakeholders was to enter into dialogue with the Ethiopian government to improve its centralised MIS used for statistical purposes, and to make it more accessible to farmers. The recommendation by the Dutch experts was to set up a business service centre to collect available historical data, including surveys and statistical information, and use this information in the development of marketing planning skills among small-scale farmers and governmental officers. This will enable farmers to efficiently use and sustain the technology currently in development.