Since the southern African food crisis of 2001/02, the ‘new-variant famine’ (NVF) hypothesis first proposed by de Waal and Whiteside (2003) has become an important part of the conventional wisdom surrounding the relationship between HIV/AIDS and food crises in the region. The NVF hypothesis...

More than two decades after the initiation of agricultural market reforms in eastern and southern Africa (ESA), governments in the region are increasingly using parastatal grain marketing boards (GMBs) and/or strategic grain reserves (SGRs) to directly influence the prices faced by farmers and...

Over the last decade, governments in eastern and southern Africa have become increasingly involved in grain marketing via strategic reserves and marketing boards. Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia all have one or both of these entities, and their level of involvement in...

Effective agricultural and food security policies in Africa need to be based on a solid empirical foundation. In Zambia, it is widely perceived that poverty rates are increasing, agricultural growth is stagnant, and real food prices are higher as food production declines. This study examines...

This report presents principal findings of a rapid reconnaissance undertaken in December, 2009 as preparation for more detailed marketing studies to be undertaken in the context of PROMISAM II’s applied research program on promoting food security in Mali. The objective of the reconnaissance...

This report discusses the potential for procurement of food aid in local/regional markets to improve the effectiveness of response to food emergency victims. The paper examines the relevance of local/regional procurement (LRP) to donors and the rationale for using it, reviews LRP’s efficiency...

The view that widows and their dependents face greater livelihood risks in the era of HIV/AIDS is indeed supported by nationally-representative survey results from Zambia. Efforts to safeguard widows’ rights to land through land tenure innovations involving community authorities may be an...

Beyond the obvious catastrophic effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on mortality, demographic changes, and the suffering of individuals and their families, we are still only learning about the complex longer-term effects of the pandemic on poverty and vulnerability. For example, the HIV/AIDS...

The economic reforms in maize marketing and trade policies implemented during the 1990s have been highly controversial, and there remains a lack of solid empirical investigation on the impacts of these reforms on national food security, price stability and rural income growth. This study aims to...

The purpose of this note is to identify underlying causes and characteristics of the current crisis facing the industry and to propose a set of actions for further consideration by industry, government, and analysts. Because of the current crisis, this note focuses on actions that can be taken...