Crop income is the predominant source of income for most rural Mozambican households, accounting for 73% of rural household income on average in 2002, and greater than 80% of the total income of the poorest 40% of rural households. While the Government of Mozambique recognizes the need to...

Many African governments responded to the dramatic increases in international and domestic grain prices of 2008 and 2009 through a mixture of trade policy changes and input/output market subsidies. In the case of Mali, the Government put in place a rice promotion program at the beginning of the...

This paper assesses the role that cereal markets have played in stimulating farm-level productivity growth and marketing of staple foods, in responding to changing demand patterns, in satisfying minimum food security needs, and in contributing to poverty reduction in both urban areas (through...

In southern Africa, HIV/AIDS is considered to be a critical factor conditioning rural economic development , exacerbating already difficult problems with climatic variability and poverty. In their efforts to use household surveys to obtain information on rural adult mortality and morbidity and...

During the last decade, the Zambian government has dramatically increased expenditures on primary and secondary schooling, and enrollment rates have risen dramatically. At the same time, Zambia has faced the challenge of rising HIV prevalence and the possibility that recent gains in long-term...

Despite the resurgence of parastatal marketing boards and strategic grain reserves over the last decade in eastern and southern Africa, there is little empirical evidence about how their activities affect smallholder input use and cropping decisions. This paper uses panel survey data from...

Replaced with revised version January 11, 2012.

There is growing concern that the HIV/AIDS epidemic may reduce long-term human capital development through reductions in child schooling in SSA, thus severely limiting the longterm ability of orphans and their extended families to escape poverty. In response, some have called for targeted...

In many African countries, as well as in other parts of the world where a significant part of the rural population is poor and food insecure, policymakers face what is called the food price dilemma. On the one hand, they need to provide farmers with incentives to increase the quantity of...

Mozambique made impressive reductions in poverty from 1996 to 2002. The national poverty rate, as documented by the National Household Consumption Survey Inquérito aos Agregados Familiares (IAF) expenditure surveys in those years, fell from 69.4% in 1996/97 to 54.1% in 2002/03. Consistent with...