This dissertation explores the intricate dynamics of agrifood value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), examining the interplay between policy interventions, market responses, and the challenges encountered by value chain participants. The first essay examines the unintended impacts of agricultural input subsidy programs (ISPs) on smallholder farm households’ dietary diversity. Despite ISPs’ resurgence in SSA as popular policy tools for intensifying agricultural production and ultimately improving food security, questions persist regarding their effects on households’ access to diverse food. Using nationally representative household panel data from Zambia, I investigate the potential underlying mechanisms through which Zambia’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) may influence smallholders’ household dietary diversity scores (HDDS) employing a fixed effects instrumental variables approach. Contrary to prior findings, the analysis uncovers a negative association between FISP fertilizer subsidies and HDDS. The program’s pronounced emphasis on maize fertilizer appears to have incentivized beneficiary households to allocate more resources to maize cultivation, to the detriment of both crop production diversity and crop income, thereby negatively affecting HDDS. In the second essay, I investigate the impacts of various risks stemming from climate change, violent conflicts, and spoilage on the often-overlooked middle segment within agrifood value chains. Using data from a survey of maize wholesale traders in Nigeria’s major maize-producing and consuming states, I explore traders’ maize storage behaviors in response to prevailing weather risks and past experience of weather, conflict, and spoilage shocks, based on their primary market channel. Given potential disparities in contract design and quality standards between the modern market channel (e.g., industrial food and feed mills) and traditional market channel (e.g., retailers, other wholesalers, and consumers), traders may adapt their storage behaviors accordingly. I use a triple-hurdle model to incorporate the initial stage of traders’ selection of their primary market channel. Subsequently, I examine how these diverse risks are associated with traders’ decision to store maize and then specific damage control practices (i.e., applying chemicals or using non-chemical methods) among those opting for storage. I find that traders selling to the traditional channel opt to promptly sell maize amid high rainfall and temperature variability and use chemicals on stored maize when previously confronted with adverse shocks. In contrast, traders selling to the modern channel tend to store maize even under unfavorable weather conditions to compensate for potential losses from risks and to consistently fulfill contractual obligations. Concerned with preserving maize quality with minimal chemical residues, these traders do not appear to apply chemicals unless they were previously exposed to spoilage shocks. In the third essay, I investigate the preferences of Nigerian maize wholesale traders regarding policies to address conflict and weather shocks. With growing concerns about the multifaceted challenges faced by agrifood value chains in SSA, understanding the perspectives of value chain participants becomes vital for designing effective policies to address the challenges. I use the best-worst scaling (BWS) method to evaluate maize traders’ preferences across various policy options. This includes nine alternative policy options for addressing violent conflicts and eight aimed at mitigating extreme weather events; these are also categorized as hard and soft infrastructure policy measures. The BWS experiment reveals that traders make trade-offs between soft and hard infrastructure policy options depending on the type of shocks encountered. Additionally, traders’ demographic and business characteristics significantly influence their policy preferences, highlighting the need for tailored policy responses aligned with the specific nature of shocks and trader characteristics.
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