Modern technologies are often not widely adopted among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several adoption constraints have been discussed in the literature, including limited access to information. Using survey data from farmers in Tanzania and the average treatment effect framework, we...

Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a...

This paper reviews recent advances in, and challenges for, weather index insurance for managing drought risk in smallholder agriculture, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its promise to integrate local agricultural risk smoothing with insurance principles, there remain many challenges...

Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level. In this paper, we used probit regression and post-estimation simulations to identify the...

Frequent droughts in sub-Saharan Africa imply water stress for rainfed agriculture and, ultimately, food insecurity, underlining the region’s vulnerability to climate change. Yet, in the maize-growing areas, farmers have been given new drought-coping options following the release and...

Commissioned by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), this study by Oxfam America constitutes one step in a much larger effort to determine how micro-insurance can help Ethiopia‘s poor become more resilient to negative financial...

Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level. In this paper, we used probit regression and post-estimation simulations to identify the...