A new framework for African smallholder agriculture : harnessing innovation and the private sector to drive sustainable development

This report will outline a new framework for improved yields and increased sustainability in Sub-Saharan African smallholder agriculture. Given the failures of agricultural development aid and policy in the past, cross-sector collaboration among local farmer networks, national governments, and private corporations could represent a new model to foster sustainable agricultural production and growth, as each has had past successes but have not traditionally come together to work as a collaborative unit. This paper will examine each sector to look at best practices and then develop a framework for such collaboration. After a normative case with a positive outlook as to the potential for implementing the framework to Senegal‘s groundnut sector, the paper concludes that the framework can work in a variety of settings as long as one is aware of and respects local conditions.