African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets.
Land and property rights, migration, and citizenship are complex issues that cut across all social, economic, and political spheres of West Africa. This paper provides an overarching scoping of the most pressing contemporary issues related to land, migration, and citizenship, including how they intersect in various contexts and locations in West Africa. The way issues are analytically framed captures structural challenges and sets them against the regional and global meta-trends of which policy makers and practitioners should be aware for conflict-sensitive planning.
Este artículo se plantea diseñar un Esquema Ideal de Acceso al Financiamiento (ESIAFIN) que posibilite a los productores de maíz de temporal en zonas de alta y muy alta marginación obtener el crédito que se requiera para poder implementar las innovaciones de bajo costo y se pueda mejorar el rendimiento del cultivo del maíz en la estrategia Asteca-maíz
El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo analizar las redes de financiamiento entre las instituciones de investigación pertenecientes al sistema nacional de investigación agropecuario (SNIA) en México. En 2014 fueron realizadas 164 encuestas a instituciones de educación (IES), centros públicos de investigación (CPI) y empresas o instituciones de investigación privado (SP) que realizan acciones de investigación en el ámbito agropecuario en México. Se utilizó la metodología de redes sociales para analizar y caracterizar la red de financiamiento de las instituciones del SNIA a nivel nacional
El objetivo de esta investigación fue analizar los factores que explican el emprendimiento en pequeños microempresarios agropecuarios del Valle de Puebla, México. Los datos utilizados se generaron en 2011 mediante una entrevista estructurada, aplicada a una muestra estadística.
This paper compares lessons learned from nine studies that explored institutional determinants of innovation towards sustainable intensification of West African agriculture. The studies investigated issues relating to crop, animal, and resources management in Benin, Ghana, and Mali.The studies showed that political ambitions to foster institutional change were often high (restoring the Beninese cotton sector and protecting Ghanaian farmers against fluctuating cocoa prices) and that the institutional change achieved was often remarkable.
Based on international literature, preliminary experiences in a three-country West African research programme, and on the disappointing impact of agricultural research on African farm innovation, the current paper argues that institutional change demands rethinking the pathways to innovation so as to acknowledge the role of rules, distribution of power and wealth, interaction and positions. The time is opportune: climate change, food insecurity, high food prices and concomitant riots are turning national food production into a political issue also for African leaders.
Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed. The article revisits this issue from a number of angles: current approaches to enlisting SSA smallholders in agricultural development; the history of the phenomenal productivity growth in the USA, The Netherlands and Green Revolution Asia; and the current framework conditions for SSA productivity growth.
These Proceedings report on the second International Conference of the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) programme in Elmina (2009). The first International Conference was four years earlier in the same location, where it was discussed how to follow up on the findings of the first CoS Programme phase (entitled CoS1 running from 2001 to 2006). The Conference was intended to introduce the focus on “innovation systems”, and how to enhance these systems for smallholder farmers’ development.
The purposes of this course are to review the major reforms being considered internationally that aim to change the policy and institutional structure and operations of public sector agricultural extension systems, and to examine the advantages and disadvantages of each of these reforms as illustrated by the selected case studies. Aside from the introductory chapter, the course is organized into nine modules, which are conceived as part of a larger framework.