ABSTRACT

In Chapters 6 through 13, I describe and analyze the TOMCs for Tropical Africa's export crops. In doing so, I draw on empirical material from many African countries over a long period. In this first chapter, we examine some features which these TOMCs have in common. Most of these features depend on the number of successive actors in the upper section of the TOMC. Accordingly, we distinguish three patterns: Pattern 1 with one actor, Pattern 2 with two actors, and Pattern 3 with three (or more) successive actors. In this chapter, we discuss them in turn.