In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue "Rural aspirations—Livelihood decisions and rural development trajectories", we outline current views on aspirations and their relevance for development research, projects and approaches. Using several examples from Africa, we outline how the...

Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lags far behind all other regions of the world. A long list of policy experiments has yielded more evidence on what fails than on what works. We analyze a randomized control trial of a rare scaled-up success story: One Acre Fund's small...