Disseminating market information via mobile phones to cashew producers: an impact evaluation in Guinea-Bissau

With raw cashew nuts exports accounting for 25% of the GDP and over 90% of Guinea-Bissau’s exports, cashew nuts production represents over 40% of annual income for over half of the country’s population. Recent studies have shown that the farm gate price, at which producers sell their raw cashew nuts, is a critical variable with a huge impact on the country’s GDP growth. Disperse ownership of small and medium cashew plantations across the population makes the impact of farm gate prices on poverty levels even larger. The increased variability of international raw cashew nuts prices in recent years has introduced an important source of inefficiency in this market: accurate information about short-term fluctuations in prices rarely reaches producers. This implies that producers frequently end up selling their cashew nuts at a much lower price than they could, were they to be well informed. We propose a clustered intervention to test the effect of a market information system sending weekly market and prices updates via mobile phones. An improved understanding of market dynamics, combined with better information, should improve farmers’ awareness of feasible prices, improving their capacity to negotiate better deals for their production. Our experimental design will allow us to study the relevance of spillover effects.