Imagine you are a small-scale milk trader in Kenya. You have some cows and you additionally collect milk from farmers to transport and sell it to milk stations. But many people and milk shops do not like to buy from you. They think you are selling unsafe, low-quality milk and they prefer to buy from formal, larger-scale sources. Government regulations are complicated and difficult to understand and researchers are analyzing and seeing you as a part of a "value chain" and this does not really help your situation.

You are facing quite lots of difficulties, and if the quality of the milk is bad, you cannot sell it anymore. You bear the risks, you lose money if the milk gets bad. Controlling the product by smell, taste, texture and density without technical support needs much expertise.

Traveling to the producers, controlling and keeping the quality to resell to milk stations is certainly a hard job. So, how to improve the situation?

The presented research takes a closer look at those limitations and possibilities for improving the situation of small-scale milk trading from the perspective of a local milk trader. What are the results? The study comes to the following conclusion to improve the situation of the traders and the milk value chain:

- Good quality milk benefits from all involved parties: a better quality of milk received and sold, steadily improves the common perception on the traders and eventually leads to higher demand and better prices. Furthermore, it helps in keeping good and fair relationships between the parties of the value chain.

- Poor quality milk, received or resold, increases costs and harms all.

Mechanisms are necessary to improve the quality of the milk in the value chain. More control over received milk and an understanding of all parties regarding the importance of high quality milk instead are needed to improve the situation of all actors in this type of milk value chain.