Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses African rice imports and examines how multinational traders navigate African political economies and shape them in turn. By crowding out the market for rice and depressing domestic competition, multinational traders contribute to reinforcing uneven productive structures.

Paper long abstract:

Studying the market strategies and business trajectories of southern multinational companies operating in Africa can help problematise some assumptions in the global value chain literature. The global rice supply chain is a case in point as this is a market where the participation of both southern traders and African consumers is on the rise. It has been argued that a trade-off for southern multinationals in southern markets is the existence of heightened local competition. In the case of rice, we find that South-South trade makes visible - on the contrary - the existence of profound unevenness within the south and helps us trace how this unevenness is produced and sustained also in south-south interactions.

This paper examines the role of the large global rice traders sourcing rice from South and Southeast Asia and their position as dominant traders in African rice markets. Although a large share of the import bill of these agriculture-based economies is spent on importing rice, most debates about upgrading in African agriculture call for export-oriented opportunities in horticulture and high value agroexports, with relative neglect for import substitution in food staples.

This paper discusses rice import dependency in Africa and examines how multinational rice traders navigate African political economies and shape them in turn. By crowding out the market for rice and depressing domestic competition, multinational traders contribute to reinforcing uneven structures shaping consumption, productive capability acquisition and ultimately, structural transformation.