The Sourcebook is the outcome of joint planning, continued interest in gender and agriculture, and concerted efforts by the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD. The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff inaddressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations.
La conférence sur « Agriculture écologique : atténuer le changement climatique, assurer la sécurité alimentaire et l’autonomie pour les sources de revenus ruraux en Afrique » s’est tenue à Addis – Abéba (Ethiopie) du 26 au 28 novembre 2008.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
Policy processes are formal and informal negotiations in which heterogeneous groups of stakeholders seek to influence policy agenda setting and the development and implementation of policy. Innovation platforms can help balance the vested interests of market actors, civil society and other stakeholders to support policy processes. They can bring together different types of expertise, experience and interests, and facilitate learning between policymakers and market and civil society actors to develop negotiated and implementable policies and regulations.
Lors de l'intervention d'une plate-forme d'innovation (groupe d'acteurs concernés) dans un domaine donné, nous avons tendance à attribuer les causes du changement aux actions de cette plate-forme. Cet article utilise le cas d'une plate-forme d'innovation dans le secteur du karité au Mali pour analyser comment les plates-formes d'innovation produisent les résultats escomptés.
This report aims to analyse the rice innovation platform in Mali. Starts showing the most recent data about production, area, importation and exportation. Discuss about the importance of the rice in the Malian economy, describe the main frameworks of the rice sector including changes in policies and perform a deep analysis in the rice food chain of the country