AFRICAN leaders, who care about food system transformation, cannot ignore what is happening in mass markets.
Ignoring these markets means ignoring more than 70% of actors who handle food after production.
In most African countries, mass markets — also known as territorial markets — are the true centre of gravity for local food systems.
Their influence continues to grow, as seen in how they create space for marginalised indigenous foods to enter national and regional markets, and even reach the diaspora, where many Africans long for the foods they grew up eating.
Broadening nutrition baskets
If urban consumers relied entirely on supermarkets, their diets would be far narrower and more monotonous. Instead, mass markets help to close this gap by providing a broad, culturally appropriate food basket that changes with the seasons.
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When indigenous fruits are in season, both urban and rural consumers consume them in abundance. When the season ends, demand naturally fades until the next cycle. With growing awareness around healthy eating, indigenous foods are increasingly entering conversations about nutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.
However, research on the nutritional contribution of indigenous foods still lags behind their growing consumption. The expanded availability of these foods in cities — something that was rare a few decades ago — is shaping dietary shifts policymakers cannot afford to ignore.
Silently decolonising food systems
By creating space for diverse indigenous foods, mass markets are quietly decolonising African food systems. They are reintroducing indigenous foods into urban kitchens, restaurants, dinner tables and social events such as weddings, as urban consumers reconnect with traditional tastes.
Indigenous foods are no longer limited to symbolic occasions such as Africa Day celebrations. While governments continue to promote industrial, high-input agriculture, mass markets are driving more climate-friendly and low-cost production and consumption patterns.
Consumers are also becoming increasingly aware that the distance food travels from farm to market has implications for sustainability and climate change. Where mass markets prioritise local produce, they strengthen farmer autonomy and reinforce more environmentally-sustainable practices.
The structure of mass markets — flexible, inclusive and community-driven — has made it difficult for corporate supply chains to displace them. Instead, many formal supply chains have had to adapt and learn from them, introducing formal practices without undermining their core dynamics.
This is why attempts to “formalise” mass markets, as though they are incomplete systems in need of correction, are often misguided.
Mechanisation may be presented as a universal solution, but some commodities are better suited to smallholder production and to processing systems rooted in generational knowledge — often preserved by women whose value-addition skills have been passed down over time.
Some indigenous commodities sold in mass markets are tied to specific cultural and tribal contexts, including uses in marriages and rain-making ceremonies, many of which are experiencing resurgence. Food system transformation cannot be achieved without understanding these deeply rooted, often undocumented dynamics.
Positioning agroecology at the centre of food systems transformation
African countries do not have the luxury of ideological battles between industrial and agro-ecological farming systems. Many African microclimates and food systems are inherently agro-ecological in practice.
What is needed is the institutional capacity and political will to support both systems simultaneously, while generating new collaborative knowledge — similar to approaches seen in countries such as China.
Agroecology should not be reduced to small NGO-led projects involving a handful of farmers in communities of thousands using different production models. Agricultural research should not focus exclusively on industrial production, hybrid seeds and formal markets at the expense of agroecology, indigenous foods and mass markets.
Countries that have undergone land reform should be scaling agro- ecological systems nationally, rather than confining them to marginal, dry regions where meaningful research and impact are difficult to achieve and document.
AI, drones and digital surveys are not everything
AI drones and digital surveys cannot replace deep contextual knowledge built through sustained engagement and field-based research. While countries like China are advanced in digital agricultural tools, they still invest heavily in long-term field engagement with farmers to develop practical solutions.
There are limits to how far technology can replicate lived food system realities.
By contrast, many African governments rely heavily on periodic digital surveys for crop and livestock assessments, which often exclude mass markets.
A stronger commitment to rigorous, grounded data collection would enable African countries to achieve more resilient and adaptive food systems capable of withstanding climate shocks.
African countries have become dependent on the West for food aid, medicine and technology partly due to weak data-driven early warning systems that fail to capture the real performance of food systems and local economies.
These systems also miss opportunities to maximise value during bumper harvests.
Investing in data systems would improve farmer livelihoods, strengthen food security, reduce reliance on imports, and ease pressure on national budgets by improving domestic production and distribution efficiency.