Performance of the agricultural sector in developing countries is fundamental to ensuring robust and equitable economic growth and broad-based food security. Yet donor support to agricultural development in developing countries has declined continuously for 30 years. This same period saw...

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Directorate of Economics, Republic of Mozambique

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Directorate of Economics, Republic of Mozambique

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...