This paper summarizes and synthesizes across the results of a set of country studies on the effects of prime-age adult mortality on rural households in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zambia. Each study is based on large representative rural household surveys. These findings have...

Accurate information on farmer and consumer behavior is the foundation for Identifying public investments and policies that can effectively promote national food security and income growth objectives. This report synthesizes recent findings on smallholder crop marketing behavior and urban...

The world food and financial crises threaten to undermine the real incomes of urban consumers in eastern and southern Africa. This study investigates patterns in staple food prices, wage rates, and marketing margins for urban consumers in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia between 1993 and...

There is continuing debate in east and southern Africa about the effects of food market reform on the welfare of small-scale farmers and low-income consumers. At the center of this debate is the perception that food prices have become more unstable in countries that have liberalized their staple...

Campaigns to prevent the spread of HIV require accurate knowledge of the characteristics of those most likely to contract the disease. Studies conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s generally found a positive correlation between socioeconomic characteristics such as education, income,...

The dramatic rise in world food prices since 2007 has commanded the world’s attention. However, in recent months, world food prices have fallen almost as rapidly as they had risen in late 2007 and early 2008, yet as is demonstrated in this report, domestic food price levels in many eastern and...

Despite its enormous potential, Myanmar’s agriculture has underperformed over the past fifty years. Today, per capita earnings in agriculture average roughly $200 a year, one-half to one-third of the levels achieved by its regional peers. Given that two-thirds of the population works primarily...

This paper aims to identify the geographic extent of major staple food market sheds in West Africa as well as the major trade corridors that link surplus producing areas with the deficit markets they serve. The method employed combines data on the spatial distribution of rural and urban...

Cassava supplies roughly 30% of all calories consumed in Mozambique, making it the country’s most important food security crop. Over the past several decades, growing urbanization and shifting demand patterns have led to growing opportunities for cassava processing and commercialization. This...

Africa has inherited highly arbitrary political borders that vastly complicate current efforts to accelerate agricultural growth and reduce hunger. Because Africa’s inherited political borders arbitrarily partition agro-ecological zones and natural market sheds, current country borders serve...