抄録
Rice is the second largest source of food energy in sub-Saharan Africa and its consumption has been increasing most rapidly among major food grains. A large part of this increase has been satisfied by import, absorbing as much as one-third of the rice traded in the world. The need to enhance food-security makes it imperative for countries in the region to reduce the dependence on the import. It has been said that a barrier to attaining this target is urban consumers’ preference of imported rice over domestic rice that is of lower quality. Although there has been a great proliferation of the literature on rice in sub-Saharan Africa, no attempt has been made to present an overall perspective of the national rice retail market that shows the structure of rice consumption in terms of quantity and quality by area of consumption and country of origin. Using data obtained from nation-wide market surveys, this paper describes the structure of the rice retail market in Uganda. The market comprises a traditional segment formed by public markets throughout the country with 95% of consumption and a modern segment formed by supermarkets all over the country with remaining 5%. Both segments are efficient and linked to each other. Contrary to the pessimistic view pervasive in the literature, local rice in Uganda is popular in the market and imported rice is priced to be competitive with the local rice brand preferred by consumers.
