This paper underscores the scope and nature of needed responses to the rapidly changing food systems in Africa. The paper identifies key drivers of this change and estimates their magnitudes. The drivers identified are urbanization, per capita income growth, globalization and climate change....

This paper takes an inventory of technical and institutional capacities of some selected tertiary agricultural education and training institutions (AET) in southern Africa. Data were gathered on key selected areas such as student enrolment, physical infrastructure, teaching staff, curricula,...

The Bean/Cowpea CRSP has been funding the Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA) since 1982 with the goal of developing improved varieties of cowpea. Cowpea is well suited to Senegalese production zones, and is a relatively inexpensive protein source. It can be eaten as both green...

This study examines the impact of the World Food Program’s (WFP) Local and Regional Procurement of food aid (LRP) on households and markets. It focuses on four countries and commodities where WFP LRP has had a meaningful share of the market: maize in Uganda and Mozambique, beans in Ethiopia,...

This study focuses on the skills requirements and the development thereof among 109 interviewed formal sector agribusiness companies in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa. The study was conducted in the context of anticipated dramatic changes in Africa’s food consumption...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been rapidly urbanizing for many years. Current estimates from the UN are that urban population growth in East Africa is over 4% per year, while in Southern Africa, which has higher urbanization levels, the growth is estimated at 2%. Overall in East and Southern...

Improving farmers’ access to markets is widely recognized as a major development challenge. A review of the literature suggests that indicators of market access may bear little relationship to the specific processes of interest and hence provide misguided evidence of the impacts of improved...

Rural poverty rates in Zambia have remained very high, at 80%, over the past decade and a half, whilst urban poverty rates have declined, from 49% in 1991 to 34% in 2006. Redressing this high rural poverty rate remains a government priority in the National Development Programs. However,...

Kenya has been recognized globally as maize success story since the 1970s. Released on the eve of independence, Kenya’s first maize hybrid diffused faster than did hybrids in the U.S Corn Belt during the 1930s-1940s. In recent decades, policy researchers have lamented that earlier gains in...