Inclusive Market Development (IMD) has potential to promote the economic development of the country through the collaborative efforts of different stakeholders (both public and private), by establishing new norms, delivering well-targeted programmes, and providing support to accelerate the pace of change. 

This document presents a summary of the main findings of sector and multi-stakeholder consultations conducted by the Platform for African European Partnership on Agricultural Research for Development (PAEPARD) during 2010-2012. It provides recommendations for the sustainable establishment of partnerships in agricultural research for development (ARD), between African and European partners in particular, to be innovative, balanced and demand-driven.

This working paper has been prepared as background for the inclusive agribusiness work stream of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development’s (GDPRD). The paper outlines the concept of inclusive business and its application to the agri-food sector, maps the current state of play and explores implications for donors and the GDPRD.

A poster on Capacity Needs Assessment displayed in simple steps.

The article examines the effect of membership in farmer groups (MFG) on adoption lag of agricultural technologies and farm performance in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. We use duration and stochastic production frontier models on farm household data. We find that the longer the duration of MFG, the shorter the adoption lag and much more so if combined with extension service delivery. Farmer groups function as an important mechanism for improving farm productivity through reduced technical inefficiency in input use.

Responding to global food crisis, such as imposed by climate change, requires resilient food systems that are able to respond to shocks. Resilience thinking, as an approach to agriculture development, focuses on enhancing the capacity of both the human and ecological systems inter alia. In this paper, the concept of resilience is approached from the perspective of socio-ecological systems dynamics. In particular, the study examined the contribution of farmers to research towards enhanced resilience of traditional African vegetable production systems in northern Ghana.

The impressive performance of improved varieties of high-yielding, heat-tolerant wheat developed in Sudan has convinced Nigerian decision makers that a viable solution to their country’s growing dependence on wheat imports is domestic production – a policy shift that will protect Nigerians from the vagaries of global commodity markets and strengthen national food security. The brief describes this solution.