“…Much has been written about the agronomic and economic constraints confronting growers of irrigated rice in the SRV (for example, Pearson et al, 1981;Haefele et al, 2002;Johnson et al, 2004;Poussin et al, 2006;Rodenburg and Johnson, 2009;Demont et al, 2009;de Mey et al, 2012), but little attention has been paid to the end-market challenges of consumer preferences for imported rice, their lack of awareness of local rice, and the general perception of its being of lower quality than imported rice -an old critique already raised by Ross (1983). 1 What does exist is a large body of literature analysing the effectiveness of price policies in reversing the trend from traditional domestic coarse grains (maize, millet, and sorghum) to imported wheat and rice in West Africa (Kelly et al, 1995;Reardon et al, 1997;Akindes, 1999;Singare et al, 1999). The conclusion from this research is that price policies do not work owing to the low price response of rice producers and consumers.…”