Agriculture in African South of the Sahara (SSA) can be transformed if the right public support is provided at the initial stage, and it can sustain itself once the enabling environment is put in place. Successes are also specific to the location of projects. In Ghana, interesting insights are...

Little has been written in recent literature regarding the role of mechanization in agricultural transformation in Africa. Government-led mechanization schemes in the 1970s and 1980s proved unsustainable after structural adjustment policies removed government support. However, demand for...

This paper describes how modern service providers have emerged in the African agricultural sector, a subject that has been vastly understudied. The paper looks at providers of modern rice mills, power tillers, combine harvesters, and production services at a highly productive rice irrigation...

This paper assesses whether tractor investment is a rational and profitable decision for farmers using firm investment theory and tractor owner survey data collected in 2013. Under erratic rainfalls, timeliness of farming operations is critical for farmers. Based on the hypothesis that owning a...

Ghana is one of a few African countries where agricultural mechanization has recently undergone rapid development. Except for places in the forest zone where stumps are still an issue in fields, tractors used for plowing and maize shelling have been widely adopted even among small farmers....

A renewed focus on agriculture's potential contribution to economic transformation in Africa has resulted in increased attention paid to agricultural mechanization. African agriculture still relies predominantly on human muscle power despite anecdotal evidence on urbanization and rising rural...

Anecdotal evidence indicates labor costs for farming in Nigeria are rising while levels of mechanization remain low. Information is scarce regarding the types of farm households that use mechanization in Nigeria and the potential demand for mechanization services among farmers. We apply cluster...

Gender differences in the engagement of work activities across sectors are important elements of gender inequality in rural livelihoods and welfare in developing countries. The role of production technologies, including agricultural mechanization, in addressing gender inequality, is increasingly...

The cocoa sector in Ghana is one of few examples of an export commodity sector in an African country that has withstood the pressure to fully liberalize. Despite substantial government control over internal and external marketing via the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), the current institutional...

Value chain development is adopted widely as a private sector-led approach to agricultural development that can benefit smallholders. The objective of this research is to understand how development organizations are conceptualizing and developing agricultural value chains in Ghana to include...