Modern supply chains – comprising the production and trade of high-value produce,
such as horticulture products, destined for high-income markets – are expanding
rapidly across developing regions. While there is consensus that the emergence and
spread of modern food supply chains is profoundly changing the way food is
produced and traded in developing countries, there is still debate on the welfare
implications. In this debate the gender effects of high-value agri-food trade and
modernization of supply chains remain an almost unexplored issue. In this paper we
examine the gender implications in modern horticulture supply chains with a main
focus on Africa. We conceptualize the various mechanisms through which women are
directly affected by the emergence of modern supply chains, we review existing
empirical evidence and add new survey-based quantitative evidence from two studies
of high-value horticulture supply chains in Senegal. Our results suggest that the
growth of modern horticulture supply chains has been associated with direct
beneficial effects for rural women and reduced gender inequalities in rural areas. We
find that that women benefit more and more directly from large-scale estate
production and agro-industrial processing, and the creation of employment in these
modern agro-industries than from high-value smallholder contract-farming. In
addition, we identify several additional unresolved issues where conclusive empirical
evidence is still lacking, or where complex causal links of direct and indirect effects
are not completely understood yet.
