Question & Answers
African Mayors ask about LED
Are there examples of LED strategies based on town markets ?
As the commercial structure of a city is an important LED factor, are there examples of LED strategies based on town markets?
Herbert George-Williams
Mayor of the Municipality of Freetown Sierra Leone
LED / markets
LED is all about the development of the local economy in its broader sense. A local town market is an important part of this broader economy and can provide a necessary outlet for local products, as long as it is located and managed in a way that will benefit the local suppliers.
To build a strategy for the town market only may not be very useful as it links to so many other aspects of the economy, such as: suppliers (their location and ability to particpate in the market system) consumers (the buying power and demand) pricing and quality, regularity of supply etc.
It may be more useful to look at a strategy for the town on LED, in partnership with local business people to construct a full LED plan for all key sectors in the town, with pragmatic initiatives that will assist in growing business in the area.
LED/Markets
I totally agree with you madam, the whole value chain must be emphasized. I will be very interested to share this strategy with some of our local government Chairmen in Nasarawa State Nigeria.
Market Upgrading - a local economic development stand alone task
Mayor WilliamsAs the person responsible for developing this local economic development global knowledge hub I thought I would easily find some useful resources for you on developing town markets. But we don't have enough materials right now. So I did a web search on google and finally came up with a string of useful resources. Please put the exact wording I have here in your advanced google search."Market upgrading" "local economic development" africaWhilst I agree that ideally you should take a strategic look at your municipality and undertake a local economy assessment and develop partnerships and then write a local economic development strategy see some examples and more resources here on LEDNA.If however you do not have the time or budget to undertake such a strategy then focussing on the market is likely to be a useful endeavour. Hopefully you will be able to doing a 'mini' strategy for the market using the tools outlined above and using the resources I have identified in the google search.Please do come back if these resources still do not meet your needs- and I will dig deeper. Good luck to you in this initiative.Gwen
examples
It will be very much interesting to see if there have been on the continent this far examples of positioning markets at the hearts of a LED approach. I have come accross cases where a market is build with a vision, for example of becoming a regional marketing platform and enhancing commercialisation for local farmers. The Bouarke Market in Côte d'Ivoire was once planned with that kind of vision. We last year posted on LEDNA the example of the market of Bougraoua-Ouédraogo in Burkina Faso that was conceived with a vision of making it a reference point in the West African region for the commercialisation of vegetables. This was of course motivated by the enormous production of vegetables in that part of Burkina Faso and the fact that this already attracted buyers from Accra, Lomé, Abidjan, Cotonou, Lagos etc. This market thus sought to address the problem of conservation and fair commercialisation by reducing unnecessary middle men. In that sense, this market was a single act almost playing out as a 'value chain' type intervention for the promotion of the whole vegetable production chain. It will be interesting to see the vision behind other similar markets in Africa.
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