1.
Institutions of Collective Action
and Smallholder Performance:
Evidence from Senegal
Fleur Wouterse and Amy Faye

2.
Context & motivation
• Smallholder agriculture is exposed to persistent market failures,
culminating in missed opportunities and suboptimal economic behavior.
• Engagement in collective action could allow for better access to markets
and more benefits from market participation for smallholders.
• Rural producer organizations could play an important role in achieving
Africa’s rural transformation.
• Senegal’s organizations have been considered weak in delivering benefits
to members.
• To leverage the country’s institutional infrastructure, we need evidence on
the contribution of these organizations to smallholder efficiency and their
ability to commercialize collectively.

3.
Senegal’s institutional infrastructure

4.
Data & methods
• 2017 data collected under the Projet d’Appui aux Politiques Agricoles
(PAPA)
• 7,000 smallholders surveyed in all rural departments of Senegal
• Covers all major value chains (dry cereals, rice, and horticulture
producers)
• Assess technical efficiency of members and non-members using
propensity score matching and stochastic frontier analysis.

5.
• About 400 Water User Associations surveyed in the horticulture value
chain.
• Activities of organizations are diverse:
• We use regression analysis to understand whether governance of the
organization affects performance (collective marketing)
Data & methods

6.
Results: technical efficiency

7.
Results: governance
-50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Established by members
Existence of a board
Decisions made by general assembly
Membership fee
Regular contributions
Meeting attendance
Must honor commitments
Profit sharing
System of accountability
Returns to quantity of produce sold (kg)

8.
Policy implications
Smallholder-level
• Encouraging smallholders’
membership
Producer organization-level
• Robustify organizations
• Maintain balance between
efficiency and equity objectives
• Producer organizations in Senegal are by no means dormant
• The role that producer organizations can play in the achievement
of the country’s economic and agricultural development is likely to
be significant.
• Possible interventions for further enhancement