Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems
31
The prices, which are transmitte to a central unit at the head office of the Ministry in Lusaka ,
are reported in Zambia Kwach per kilogramme. This is despite the fact that trade in t
predominantly informal market s volume-based, for example in bags or “bowls” of differe
sizes and non-standardised weight. A similar situation occurs across most African countries.
Usually, a conversion factor is applied but in order to determine the fact that weight per specific
volume is not standardised introduces a significant error factor. For example, in Ghana,
wholesale prices are reported on per bag basis though average weight per bag differs depending
on the location – one bag of maize on the average weighs 145 kilos at the farmgate compared to
135 kilos in urban wholesale markets and 125 kilos in urban retail markets (Onumah and Aning,
2009).In Zambia as in most developing countries, quality standards for agricultural commodities are
only enforced for export crops such as coffee. As a result, though wholesale and retail prices
often differ depending on the quality, even in the rather dominant informal markets, the
reported prices do not reflect quality differences. For instance, deliveries from small-scale
farmers to medium to large-scale grain milling companies in Zambia tend to suffer a quality
discount of 10-15% but this is not reflected in reported maize prices, which give the impression
of a single price the crop no matter the quality (NRI 2002).Shepherd (1997) identified other operational problems encountered in the collection of data
under ZAMIS, including difficulties in funding transport costs for visits to the markets. The fact
that the data collectors only “asked for prices but didn’t buy” was a source of frustration for
traders and sometimes hindered cooperation in providing accurate information. This again is a
common problem and in Sierra Leone and Ghana, for instance, the data collectors were
sometimes provided with funds to actually buy from the retailers. This proved unsustainable. In
Mongolia, where toll collectors working for local government authorities were deployed in
collecting price data, traders’ reportedly under-reported retail prices in order to avoid paying
higher market tolls (Shepherd, ibid.).Transmission of data to the central processing units often encountered problems, leading to
delays in publication of information generated and, thereby, making it less relevant to market
participants. Dissemination of information was mainly through radio broadcasts by the state-
owned broadcaster. This was done in both English (the official language) as well as in local
languages such as Bemba which is spoken by a large section of the population. Newspapers as
well as ‘bulletin boards’ mounted in some markets were also used to disseminate price
information.The price data tended to be broadcast in nominal terms without any significant trend analysis.
The reports usually covered a large number of rural and urban markets, making broadcasts
difficult to follow for most of the audience. Hence, commercial broadcasting was only
undertaken on payment of fees by the government. In other countries, even the timing of the
broadcast posed challenges in terms of attracting the primary target audience – farmers and
small to medium-scale traders. For instance, in Ghana, the price bulletins were broadcast late
afternoon at a time when most of the target audience were on their way home and had no access
to radios (Onumah and Aning, 2009). Shepherd (1997) also cites similar poor timing in
broadcasts in Benin in West Africa and in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. He further
5 Capital of Zambia.
6 The national currency of the Republic of Zambia.