Fish is a key source of income, food, and nutrition in Zambia, although unlike in the past, capture fisheries no longer meet the national demand for fish. Supply shortfalls created an opportunity to develop the aquaculture sector in Zambia, which is now one of the largest producers of farmed fish (Tilapia spp.) on the continent. In its present form, the aquaculture sector exhibits a dichotomy.
This article investigates determinants and impacts of cooperative organization, using the example of smallholder banana farmers in Kenya. Farmer groups are inclusive of the poor, although wealthier households are more likely to join. Employing propensity score matching, we find positive income effects for active group members. Yet price advantages of collective marketing are small, and high-value market potentials have not yet been tapped. Beyond prices, farmer groups function as important catalysts for innovation adoption through promoting efficient information flows.
The use of mobile phones has increased rapidly in many developing countries, including in rural areas. Besides reducing the costs of communication and improving access to information, mobile phones are an enabling technology for other innovations. One important example are mobile phone based money transfers, which could be very relevant for the rural poor, who are often underserved by the formal banking system. We analyze impacts of mobile money technology on the welfare of smallholder farm households in Kenya.
Classical innovation adoption models implicitly assume homogenous information flow across farmers, which is often not realistic. As a result, selection bias in adoption parameters may occur. We focus on tissue culture (TC) banana technology that was introduced in Kenya more than 10 years ago. Up till now, adoption rates have remained relatively low.
Many of the world’s food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribution changes seasonally. We use representative data from rural Ethiopia covering every month of one full year to address this knowledge gap.
Objective
The association between farm production diversity and dietary diversity in rural smallholder households was recently analysed. Most existing studies build on household-level dietary diversity indicators calculated from 7d food consumption recalls. Herein, this association is revisited with individual-level 24 h recall data. The robustness of the results is tested by comparing household- and individual-level estimates. The role of other factors that may influence dietary diversity, such as market access and agricultural technology, is also analysed.
The recent proliferation of mobile phones in rural Africa has also led to increased interest in mobile financial services (MFS), such as mobile money and mobile banking. Such services are often portrayed as promising tools to improve agricultural finance, especially among smallholders who are typically underserved by traditional banks. However, empirical evidence on the actual use of MFS for agricultural activities is thin. Here, we use nationally representative data from Kenya to analyze the use of mobile payments, mobile savings, and mobile credit among the farming population.
Potato is the third most widely-cultivated food crop in the world and one of the most profitable food crops. Therefore, it allows producers to improve their living conditions with
La présente étude porte sur l’analyse de la chaîne de valeur de la pomme de terre dans les régions de Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceima (TTH) et Casablanca-Settat (CS). Notre point de départ est une analyse descriptive des données récoltées sur le terrain et de la revue bibliographique. Puis, à travers une analyse fonctionnelle, nous identifions les acteurs de la chaîne, leurs fonctions et formes d’organisation, et les flux d’échange tout au long de celle-ci.
La crise liée au SARS-CoV2 (syndrome respiratoire aigu sévère–coronavirus 2) a donné lieu à une profusion de documents et webinaires sur la sécurité alimentaire au niveau international, ce qui tend à brouiller la compréhension des dynamiques à l’œuvre sur le terrain. Cet article se propose de faire le point sur la situation des secteurs agricole et agroalimentaire, à partir des informations relayées par un réseau d’experts du Cirad et de leurs partenaires dans une diversité de pays en Afrique subsaharienne.