Following the food price crisis in 2008, African governments implemented policies aiming at crowding in investment in rice value chain upgrading to help domestic rice compete with imports. This study assess the state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa by reviewing evidence on rice millers’ investment in semi-industrial and industrial milling technologies, contract farming and vertical integration during the post-crisis period 2009–2019. We find that upgrading is more dynamic in countries with high rice production and import bills and limited comparative advantage in demand.
This paper was synthesized from several scholarly literature and aimed at providing up-to-date information on climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, policies and institutional mechanisms that each agriculture subsector had put in place in dealing with climate change and its related issues in West Africa. For each subsector (crop, fishery and livestock), the current status, climate change impacts, mitigation and adaption strategies have been analyzed
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, examines the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas that emerge in particular settings, such as family farming in Brazil, do not travel easily across space and socio-political realities.
In the context of an exponential rise in access to information in the last two decades, this special issue explores when and how information might be harnessed to improve governance and public service delivery in rural areas. Information is a critical component of government and citizens’ decision-making; therefore, improvements in its availability and reliability stand to benefit many dimensions of governance, including service delivery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This publication provides a collection of papers, commentaries, expert opinions and reflections on state-of-the-art innovation systems thinking and approaches in agriculture. It is the direct output of a CTA and WUR/CoS-SIS collaboration which had its genesis in an expert consultation on ‘Innovation Systems: Towards Effective Strategies in support of Smallholder Farmers’.