Potential Demand for a New Value-Added Cowpea Product as Measured by the Willingness-to-Pay for Cowpea Flour in West Africa

The objective of this paper is to assess the potential demand for a new value-added cowpea product – cowpea flour for purchase by women street food vendors. We use a non-hypothetical real purchase decision mechanism that involves real purchase exchanges of 1 kg packages of cowpea flour in a real market environment in Niamey, Niger. Completed market transactions were bounded between an upper and lower limit price. Our results indicate that kossai vendors’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for 1kg of cowpea flour exceeds the costs of production including a retail margin. Differences in WTP averages for different groups of vendors (economic status, vendor processor type and scale of production) were found to be statistically significant. Potential exists for profitable entrepreneurial activity in the cowpea flour business targeting women street vendors from more affluent neighborhoods; those using the wet milling process and those who are medium and large scale vendors.