We estimate the impact of access to information and communication technology on agricultural profitability and child labor among isolated villages in rural Peru. We exploit the timing of an intervention that provided at least one public (satellite) payphone to 6,296 villages that did not...

Africa's improved growth performance over the last 15 years provides an opportunity for the continent to transit from recovery to structural transformation. This paper reviews the evolution of development theory and practice, the role of agriculture therein, and the pace of structural...

This paper identifies the effect of aspirations on the adoption of agricultural innovations in the context of rural Ethiopia. While most studies on agricultural innovations have focused on identifying observable and resource-related deprivations or 'external' constraints, a related stream of...

This paper assesses biofuels technology readiness and provides foresight to biofuels development in Southern Africa. Efficient conversion pathways, coupled with biomass from waste or high-yielding energy crops, reduces both the costs of biofuels production and the environmental impacts....

Long-run development (in income) causes a large fall in the share of agriculture commonly known as the agricultural transition. We confirm that this conventional wisdom is strongly supported by the data. Long-run development (in income) also causes a large increase in democracy known as the...

This paper reviews the current state of literature on the impacts of urbanization on rural development in developing countries, with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It also provides a conceptual framework for linking these phenomena, and identifies research gaps that have important...

Mali is a Sub-Saharan African country with 19.1 million people. Almost half of this population lives in poverty, due to the dysfunction of activity sectors (agriculture, energy, education, employment, services, etc.). Natural resource management especially land and water together with...

This paper synthesizes a set of national case studies conducted in the Sahelian countries during 2019- 2020 as a collaboration between national universities and research institutes, and the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, with contributions from the Agrhymet Regional...

We use a panel dataset of around 3.500 rural households from Southeast Asia and investigate evidence on crime victimization. More concretely, we ask (1) to what extent are rural people in Thailand and Vietnam affected by crime? And (2) what factors determine rural crime victimization? We use the...

Genetically Modified Crops (GMO foods) have been widely available to farmers since 1996. The Gene Revolution, based on recombinant DNA (rDNA) genetic engineering techniques, is seen by proponents as both supplanting Green Revolution varieties, based on conventional plant breeding techniques, and...