The lack of a reliably safe food supply in developing countries imposes major costs on both public health and market performance. This paper addresses the question of whether and why food processing firms voluntarily invest in food safety in the absence of effective regulatory enforcement. Using...

Financial cooperatives and microfinance institutions (MFIs) are the two major sources of rural finance in Ethiopia. Whereas MFIs are relatively new, financial cooperatives have existed for centuries in various forms. The coexistence of two different institutions serving the same group of people,...

In the context of increasing vulnerability to climate change for people dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, the International Food Policy Research Institute and partner organizations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, and Bangladesh undertook a project broadly aiming to create knowledge...

This document describes the construction of a social accounting matrix (SAM) for Senegal. The SAM is based upon 2011 national accounts statistics and provides a consistent framework for the assessment of growth and employment policies.

This research has been undertaken to improve our understanding of stakeholders’ knowledge and perception about ecosystem services (ES), which provides a valuable means of gaining insight into the opportunities and constraints that face ES management in a multiuser landscape. Land use...

Although there is ample evidence of differences in how and where men and women acquire information, most research on learning and household decisionmaking only considers access to information for a single, typically male, household head. This assumption may be problematic in developing-country...

Since the publication of the World Development Report 2008, two related strands of research have emerged—one on the validity of smallholder-led development strategy and the other on agricultural intensification under population pressure. The former casts doubt about the role of...

This 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report is the fourth in an annual series that provides a comprehensive overview of major food policy developments and events. In this report, distinguished researchers, policymakers, and practitioners review what happened in food policy in 2014 at the global,...

Approximately 80 percent of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihoods, but-unlike in other regions of the world-agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by very low yields due to agroecological features, poor access to...