Market information systems (MIS) were largely promoted in Sub-Saharan Africa to support the policies of liberalization of agricultural value chains. Presented as strong tools to accompany these policies, they were aimed at solving the problems of agricultural markets related to problems of information, characterized as being incomplete and asymmetric between different actors (producers and traders in particular).
MIS are systems (services) which have as objective to regularly collect information on prices of agricultural products, quantities traded, and to diffuse these information to the public (state) and most especially private (agricultural producers, traders, consumers). The information diffused is expected to improve market transparency and assist market actors in their decisions).
Why such a development of MIS in Sub-Saharan Africa? On what theoretical grounds are they built? How did they evolve? What are their impacts and their effectiveness?
