Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
248
result(s) for
"Agricultural development projects Africa."
Sort by:
World Bank assistance to agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa : an IEG review
A critical analysis of World Bank's agricultural assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa.This study assesses the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance in addressing constraints to agricultural development in Africa over the period of fiscal 1991-2006.This region faces a variety of constraints that make its development a complex challenge.
eBook
Agricultural development and food security in Africa
The subject of food security and land issues in Africa has become one of increased importance and contention over recent years. In particular, the focus has shifted to the role new global South donors – especially India, China and Brazil – are playing in shaping African agriculture through their increased involvement and investment in the continent. Approaching the topic through the framework of South-South co-operation, this highly original volume presents a critical analysis of the ways in which Chinese, Indian and Brazilian engagements in African agriculture are structured and implemented. Do these investments have the potential to create new opportunities to improve local living standards, transfer new technology and knowhow to African producers, and reverse the persistent productivity decline in African agriculture? Or will they simply aggravate the problem of food insecurity by accelerating the process of land alienation and displacement of local people from their land? Topical and comprehensive, Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa offers fresh insight into a set of relationships that will shape both Africa and the world over the coming decades.
eBook
African agricultural reforms
Studies evaluating the supply response in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to the agricultural policy reforms have found that agricultural growth rates after reforms have been uneven, and, in many countries. The book contains 10 studies focusing on a group of agricultural commodities and the reforms programs associated with them. These cases were selected to illustrate different dimensions of price developments, shocks, and institutional arrangements used to manage these shocks and thus do not constitute a representative sample of agricultural reform processes in SSA. The focus is on export crops because most of the reforms initially focused on these, and the data are more reliable and domestic prices are better connected to international markets. First-stage positive response to a reform program does not guarantee the program's sustainability. Reform sustainability usually requires more comprehensive institutional overhauls that provide stakeholders with sufficient flexibility to accommodate upcoming shocks to the sector. Finally, the studies and hypotheses outlined in this volume should be treated as preliminary. More case studies must be undertaken; following the paths outlined in this volume, to test whether some of the hypotheses advanced here have greater applicability and can be generalized with greater confidence.
eBook
African smallholders. Food crops, markets and policy
Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly a rural and agricultural phenomenon. The large majority of all poor are farmers and herders, therefore as long as the poor remain smallholders, alleviation of poverty remains an agricultural task. African Smallholders documents the farm-level effects of agricultural policies, focusing on a variety of themes including micro-credit, infrastructure, cash crop production and food security. To deepen our understanding of agricultural development it discusses staple food production in sub-Saharan Africa and its response to changing geo-political, macro-economic and agricultural policy. It is a useful resource for all those researching or involved with food security, agricultural and rural development in sub-Saharan Africa.
eBook
World Bank Assistance to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is a critical development priority-it has some of the world's poorest countries and during the past two decades the number of poor in the Region has doubled, to 300 million-more than 40 percent of the Region's population. Africa remains behind on most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is unlikely to reach them by 2015. With some of the world's poorest countries, Africa is a development priority for the donor community. A major drag on Africa's development is the underperformance of the critical agriculture sector, which has been neglected both by donors and governments over the past two decades. The sector faces a variety of constraints that are particular to agriculture in Africa and make its development a complex challenge. Poor governance and conflict in several countries further complicate matters. IEG has assessed the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance in addressing constraints to agricultural development in Africa over the period of fiscal 1991-2006.
Publication
African Agricultural Reforms
Contents; Foreword; About the Editor and Authors; Abbreviations; Introduction and Overview; Chapter 1 Consensus, Institutions, and Supply Response: The Political Economy of Agricultural Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa; Tables; 1.1 Production before and after the Reforms; 1.2 Changes in the Producers' Share of Export Price Following Reforms; Figures; 1.1 Cotton Production and Producer Prices in Zambia; 1.2 Tobacco Production and Producer Prices in Tanzania; 1.3 Tea Production and Producer Prices in Kenya; 1.4 Tea Production and Producer Prices in Tanzania
Publication
Building competitiveness in Africa's agriculture : a guide to value chain concepts and applications
Value chain–based approaches offer tremendous scope for market-based improvements in production, productivity, rural economy diversification, and household incomes, but are often covered by literature that is too conceptual or heavily focused on analysis. This has created a gap in the information available to planners, practitioners, and value chain participants. Furthermore, few references are available on how these approaches can be applied specifically to developing agriculture in Africa. 'Building Competitiveness in Africa's Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications' describes practical implementation approaches and illustrates them with scores of real African agribusiness case studies. Using these examples, the 'Guide' presents a range of concepts, analytical tools, and methodologies centered on the value chain that can be used to design, implement, and evaluate agricultural and agribusiness development initiatives. It stresses principles of market focus, collaboration, information sharing, and innovation. The 'Guide' begins by examining core concepts and issues related to value chains. A brief literature review then focuses on five topics of particular relevance to African agricultural value chains. These topics address challenges faced by value chain participants and practitioners that resonate through the many cases described in the book. The core of the book presents methodological tools and approaches that blend important value chain concepts with the topics and with sound business principles. The tools and case studies have been selected for their usefulness in supporting market-driven, private-sector initiatives to improve value chains. The 'Guide' offers 13 implementation approaches, presented within the implementation cycle of a value chain program, followed by descriptions of actual cases. Roughly 60 percent of the examples are from Africa, while the rest come from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The 'Guide' offers useful guidance to businesspeople, policy makers, representatives of farmer or trade organizations, and others who are engaged in agro-enterprise and agribusiness development. These readers will learn how to use value chain approaches in ways that can contribute to sound operational decisions, improved market linkage, and better results for enterprise and industry development.
eBook
Farm-level pathways to food security: beyond missing markets and irrational peasants
Development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa propose to alleviate hunger in rural areas by introducing new agricultural practices and technologies, yet there is limited empirical evidence of how an agricultural intervention can lead farming households to transition to food security. Research on food security pathways considers agricultural interventions that increase farmers’ income to be particularly effective for reducing food insecurity. Consistent with this stance, Malawian agricultural policy aims to address hunger by encouraging smallholder farmers to intensify and commercialize maize production. This paper explores if smallholders’ market and livelihood orientations do indeed lead them to favor an income pathway to food security. Qualitative analysis of 60 smallholder farmer interviews in Malawi found that, upon achieving improvements in production yields and diversity, rather than commercialize, many farmers re-organized their production and consumption to reduce market dependency. Farmers deployed this strategy to increase their food security, explaining that the choice to self-provision food and farming inputs was both an expression of farming identity and a lived understanding of their marginal position in commodity markets. The author finds that, in failing to consider how production relations affect food access, scholarship inadequately theorizes farm-level food security transitions and reproduces discursive framings of hunger. Food sovereignty narratives more accurately captured what mattered for Malawian smallholders’ food security, suggesting that engagement with this concept could improve scientific understandings of food security transitions.
Journal Article