Abstract

 
 
 Small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) growth and survival constitute opportunities for the smallholders to become integrated into the export market. Smallholders can gain additional incomes from their transactions with SMEs and in turn, poverty problem could be alleviated. This article aims to better understand how export SMEs’ growth and survival strengthens smallholders’ market integration development and livelihood improvement. We collected data from 52 SMEs involved in the cassava and shea butter sectors in Benin. Interviews were organized, based on the need of value market access, with cassava producers in the Center Region, and women collecting and transforming shea nuts into butter in the Center and Northern Regions. When developing the measurement instrument, its validity and trustworthiness are concerned. SPSS was used for descriptive statistics and R was used for Multiple Correspondence Factor Analysis. Results suggest that 96% of SMEs exporting firms perceived exporting as profitable and resources generation tool. 95% of smallholders appreciate SMEs as value added markets for their products. SMEs are institutional context for smallholders exchange experience in value added process, customers’ needs and expectations satisfaction. They earn more profits from their selling when export SMEs grow and survive. Growth and survival are explained by export selling, share of exporting in total selling, satisfaction of Teklehaimanot exporting, manager perception of success and profitability and export profit.
 
 
Highlights
The majority of smallholder agricultural producers in developing countries live and work in rural areas that are often quite remote from markets because of lack of infrastructure (Collier and Gunning, 1999)
The presentation of the results was split into two parts, one of which presented exporting firms’ characteristics analyzed by means of descriptive statistics whereas the other showed the typology of Small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) generated by means of the Multiple Correspondence Factorial Analysis (MCFA)
Our findings suggest that SMEs seeking to profitably improve smallholder producers’ integration with export markets would be well advised to assess their own export competitiveness capabilities to implement functional marketing plans, i.e., marketenhancing practices, that can be mutually beneficial to both the SMEs and smallholder producers
Summary
The majority of smallholder agricultural producers in developing countries live and work in rural areas that are often quite remote from markets because of lack of infrastructure (Collier and Gunning, 1999). They operate in rural areas, they play important role by providing international trade with important industry raw materials such as coffee, tea and cocoa (Winter‐Nelson and Temu, 2005; Buckley and Strange, 2015). Sub-Saharan African smallholder producers serve local, regional and export markets (Shiferaw et al, 2011) They supply raw materials to agro-allied industries, represent a low-cost workforce of populations with low incomes, and often maintain informal trade networks (Teklehaimanot et al, 2017)
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