IFPRI Kenya was pleased to host Sarah Kariuki and Jamleck Osiemo for the AMD Seminar Series held on Monday, June 8, 2026, from 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm (EAT). The hybrid session brought together both in-person and virtual participants for an engaging discussion.
The presenters shared valuable insights that contributed to ongoing conversations within the AMD thematic area. IFPRI Kenya appreciates their contribution and the active participation from attendees.
ABSTRACT
In informal markets with weak regulation and incomplete information, unobservable food quality attributes such as safety are often undersupplied. Observable traits can serve as proxies for these attributes, but market actors often lack knowledge of these correlations. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in 90 rural maize markets in eastern Kenya to test whether a six-week information campaign linking kernel appearance to aflatoxin contamination—a major but unobservable food safety risk—affected consumer demand and trader supply. Three weeks after the campaign, maize in treatment markets showed improvements in observable quality, accompanied by behavioral responses among consumers and traders, including increased checking of kernel integrity and marginal sorting of damaged kernels. Price premia for higher-quality maize did not emerge; instead, sales volumes declined, driven primarily by reduced sales of poor-quality maize. These effects had attenuated by the second follow-up, approximately two months later, as new maize entered the markets. Results suggest that low-cost information can induce short-run improvements in food quality in informal markets; sustaining these gains likely requires repeated campaigns or complementary incentives.
Sarah Kariuki is a Market and Value Chain Specialist at CIMMYT, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Sarah conducts research for development, with a focus on input and output markets for improved livelihoods, reduced poverty, enhanced nutritional security, and improved health in developing countries. Sarah's recent work employs experimental methods with different actors along agricultural value chains to assess innovations that accelerate varietal replacement and turnover, as well as innovations that accelerate value chain upgrading and enable the emergence of markets for quality. In addition, Sarah addresses food safety challenges by analyzing policy and technology pathways that enable actors to mitigate health risks from unsafe foods while improving livelihoods.
Jamlek Osiemo is a Research Specialist in Climate Action at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. He is also a PhD candidate in Development Economics at Wageningen University.