ABSTRACT
The shift in urban diets from the traditional coarse grain (millet and sorghum) to (mainly) imported rice has worried policy makers in Sahelian West Africa for two decades. This trend has hurt trade balances, as cities have grown rapidly, and has sapped potential gains of a growing urban food market to coarse grain farmers. Predicted demand is first calculated for six sub-groups, then aggregated on the basis of the weight of each sub-group in the population of Bamako. The sub-groups are military and civilian, each comprising three income terciles. For each of the six sub-groups, the quantity demanded is based on the responses of male respondents (that is, all gender interaction terms are restricted to zero) at the sub-group mean value of each independent variable. The results point to the importance of the convenience characteristics of maize flour, especially to working women.
