From phone access to food markets: How mobile connectivity is transforming rural livelihoods in West Africa

Joël Cariolle () and David Carroll ()
Additional contact information
Joël Cariolle: FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International, CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne
David Carroll: Tufts University [Medford]

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: This paper shows that mobile connectivity transforms household livelihoods in ways that foster food market integration in WAEMU countries. Using cross-sectional data on nearly 60,000 households and 146 food products traded across 5,000 enumeration areas in eight member states (2018–2019), the authors combine dyadic and instrumental-variable estimations to identify a demand-led process of spatial food price integration. Dyadic results show that connectivity operates through a spatially layered mechanism: supply-side arbitrage dominates across distant markets and for perishable products, while at local scales price convergence takes the form of a rural–urban catch-up, indicating demand-side adjustments. Household-level analysis supports this mechanism, showing that mobile ownership in covered rural areas increases food purchases and reduces self-consumption, driven by mobile money use and diversification into non-agricultural activities. However, non-adopters in the same locations reduce spending, suggesting negative externalities from higher local prices and limited income gains, and hence heterogeneous welfare effects of connectivity. The update includes the addition of econometric tests of the effect of connectivity on the spatial dispersion of food prices, improvements to the statistical treatment of certain variables used in the analysis, and a reorganisation of the paper's content. First publication: May 2024 Revised version: January 2026

Keywords: Mobile phones; Digital technologies; Digital development; Agricultural transformation; Agricullture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01-13
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04583057v2
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04583057v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04583057

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().