The overall aims of the study are to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of smallholder commercialisation and its strengths and weaknesses in contributing to broad-based growth.
• Strengthen understanding of the context in which policy choices have to be made.
• Help identify innovative ways to link public funding with private sector resources.
• Provide specific advice to governments on the most appropriate interventions they could make and equip decision makers with knowledge to make wise choices about where, when and how to invest.

In an attempt to meet these aims, this synthesis investigates why things might be working in spite of perceived constraints. What factors influenced the success of these enterprises? How did they deal with perceived constraints? Why did they succeed where others have failed? Can successes be scaled-up and replicated? Where can effort and public money best be focused? These were some of the questions that the case studies set out to answer.