Agricultural Value Chain Development Projects and Household Nutrition in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire

Many mainstream development actors and scholars concerned about rural poverty and hunger in Africa recommend integrating smallholder farmers, especially women, into formally structured agricultural value chains (AVCs). This influential approach rests on the assumption that productivity‐enhancing technologies and stronger market linkages will raise farmer incomes, and in turn improve food and nutrition security (FNS) in farmer households via increased food purchases. This article tests this assumption using quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews with women farmers who participated in AVC projects in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire from 2016 to 2020. The survey data show that AVC participation has no statistically significant impact on household FNS or women's dietary quality, regardless of initial household income, type of crop (food, non‐food), or market scale (national, regional, global). The qualitative findings explain these results more fully, and reveal major challenges for strategies to improve rural FNS through formally structured AVCs: top‐down power dynamics of AVCs do not adequately address smallholders’ needs; participation in AVCs exposes smallholders, especially women, to new types of risk that inhibit their participation; and in increasingly monetized rural economies, women have other spending priorities that compete with food expenditures.