Digital Trading and Market Platforms: Ghana Case Study

Introduction to Development Engineering

Keren Neza, Yaw Nyarko, and Angela Orozco

In many poor nations and areas, the lack of markets is a major constraint to economic development. We will focus in this paper on smallholder agriculture, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. In these areas, farmers would want to increase their outputs but worry that they will not find buyers for their crops at a good price. Buyers and traders similarly often have needs for agricultural goods and often cannot find farmers to supply those goods at the right quality and consistency over time. Potential agricultural food processing industrialists would want to set up their factories but also fear that they will not be able to reliably and consistently obtain the inputs for their goods.