The initial success of microfinance programs in the 1970s led pioneers to think that many essential problems of the poor might be resolved by access to credit alone -- the ability to acquire assets, to start businesses, to finance emergency needs and to insure against illness and disaster. Part...

"Given that Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of poverty and malnutrition in the world, the stagnation in per capita grain production there is worrisome. Since 1970, per capita grain production in Sub-Saharan Africa has declined more than 10 percent. Increasing the productivity of...

There is widespread agreement that our ability to deliver sustainable food security for all will be challenged in three dimensions—population growth, constrained natural resources, and climate change. Investments in agricultural productivity are essential to dealing with these challenges....

Due to the predominance of direct, specific interventions in nutrition for development, the health sector tends to own nutrition, with interventions customarily implemented through health programs. The premise that the agriculture sector should also be a vehicle for improved nutrition is...

Many people in the vast rural areas of Africa lack access to financial services, and most commercial banks are not interested in moving into these areas due to their low income levels, lack of scale economies, and poor infrastructure. Also, few banks actually understand the most common economic...

Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a...

A primary motivation for this study is to identify a key set of policy options for improving fertilizer markets in West Africa (among Economic Community of West African States member countries) in ways that ultimately will help improve the efficiency of regional markets and lower the transaction...

To better inform donor support for public food safety interventions, this paper reviews the literature on the impact of more stringent food safety standards on developing-country markets. This literature has primarily focused on the market access and economic implications of higher standards in...

The rapid expansion of commodity agriculture in tropical forest landscapes is a key driver of deforestation. To meet the growing demand from a more prosperous and expanding global population, it is imperative to develop sustainable commodity supply chains that support higher agricultural...