Wait, you're a what?

   Anyone who has studied or read-up on the topic of rural development, especially international rural development has seen lists of reasons for why one community is lagging behind the rest in terms of quality of life. The laundry list will generally include the following (students of rural development take note): Poor transport infrastructure, Poor communication infrastructure, Disease epidemics, Wars/Civil unrest, Corrupt government officials, Degraded soils, International trade barriers, etc... In these lists, there is another common character who is probably one of the more vague and enigmatic boogey-men of underdevelopment, a man we like to call the Middle-Man. The Middle-Man (Mr M for short) is a lazy good for nothing who buys from vulnerable farmers at give-away prices and resells without adding any value to a product, except maybe to transport it to a better market town, and laughs all the way to the bank.He is blamed for keeping markets dis-integrated and taking a much greater share of the final market price of an agricultural commodity than the primary producer.

   So with this concept in my mind of what a Middle-Man is, you can imagine my surprise when this week a friend described his goat business to me. In addition to keeping and selling some of his own goats, this man purchases goats in the morning of each market day (every 8 days in Oku) then re-sells them to traders who come in from larger cities later in the day. If you didn't get how that worked, I'll make a diagram, see Figure 1 transactions a and b. From what I've been taught, that's what Middle-Men do, and it is bad. This all takes place in the same spot each market day, about 300 meters from the main market. He can apparently make about a 2,000 Franc (~$4) profit per goat, so most market days he'll take between 6,000 and 10,000 Francs. Keep in mind that 2,000 Francs is considered a very decent days pay by most people in Oku.

   Now what I have to ask is why doesn't the man who sold the goat in the morning wait a couple of hours and sell it for 2,000 Francs more later in the day (See figure 1 transaction '?')? Here's how that question gets answered (from my memory and put into clearer terms):

Me – So why do they sell to you if they could sell for more later in the day?

Friend – They couldn't get more later in the day.

Me – Why not? You do.

Friend – But these traders from Douala wouldn't give them the same price. Farmers know that they would get taken advantage of, but they trust me. They sell to me for a higher price than they could get from those traders from out of town.

Me – So you pretty much run the goat market for Oku?

Friend – There are 8 of us who are partners.

Me – What if someone doesn't want to sell to you, they want to try selling direct to the men from out of town?

Friend – They can do that, but any man who comes from out of town knows that he only has to come to us and he can get goats.

   How does this change my view of 'Middle-Men'? Well, my friends not a bad guy from what I know of him and really it seems that what he is doing is what is best for the Oku community. Instead of having individuals all trying to sell their goats to out-of-towners, probably undercutting each others prices in the process, the market is centralized, giving a greater advantage to the seller (My friend). As a member of the community, my friend is acting under social pressures that oblige him to offer reasonable prices for goats and once the goats are in his possession it is in his interest to get the best price possible from those out-of-towners. 

   It can be a fine line between providing a service and exploiting an unwary farmer. Perhaps more money is actually getting to Oku because of my friend's goat market than would be if it wasn't there. I won't be doing any serious investigations into the matter, but I imagine that as the coffee buying season approaches I'll start to see a lot of similar commercial activity surrounding the purchase of dried beans and it won't be easy to see when that line is being crossed. We'll be doing our best to be sure we can stay safely on the service side of things.