4 September 2017Calls for liberalising cash-crop sectors in sub-Saharan Africa have been voiced for decades, yet the impact of reforms remains elusive in empirical studies. This article offers new opportunities for solving this problem by creating precise and consistent market organisation indices for 25 African cotton markets from 1961 to 2008. The aggregation of scores reveals interesting trends: markets are no more competitive today than in the late 1990s, 50% of production still originates from markets with fixed prices and reforms are giving rise to a new type of regulated market in both East and West Africa.