The development of improved agricultural technologies has tremendous potential for improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Conservation agriculture (CA) has been widely promoted to improve farmers’ productivity and decrease their vulnerability to climate change....

Many of the agricultural input subsidy programs (ISPs) currently being implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa include among their objectives raising farm incomes and reducing rural poverty. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the extent to which ISPs are achieving these objectives....

Raising agricultural productivity to meet growing food demands while increasing the resilience of rain-fed farm systems to climate variability is one of the most pressing contemporary development challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Anchored on the three core principles of minimum tillage...

The successive maize bumper harvests experienced by Zambia in recent years mean that the country has to find long lasting and sustainable ways to deal with persistent maize marketing challenges facing the smallholder farmers. The government has continued to struggle with the price-dilemma where...

This study examined the use of various sources of cooking energy among urban households in Zambia, and analyzed urban households’ energy choice and charcoal consumption decisions using econometric models. Overall, charcoal is the most common source of main cooking energy in urban areas,...

Economists have long held that broad-based agricultural growth is the most powerful source of poverty reduction in developing countries where most of the rural population is engaged in agriculture (Johnston and Mellor 1961; Mellor 1974; Lipton 2006). However, in Zambia’s case, despite sustained and...

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a stated goal of lifting more than a quarter of millions of rural farmers out of poverty in Zambia’s Eastern Province through the implementation of the Feed the Future program (FtF). Part of the program’s goal will be...

This study examines how extreme weather in the context of on-going economic shocks influence regional inequality and polarization within Mozambique. Utilizing satellite-based estimates of rainfall that we spatially analyze within a GIS, we establish a 16-year rainfall climatology and calculate...

In Zambia like in many other developing countries, the agricultural sector is highly dependent on rain-fed production and therefore vulnerable to weather shocks. Maize is the primary staple crop in Zambia, and is widely grown by smallholder farmers throughout the country, with a dual...

Over the years, the sugar sector has experienced tremendous growth which has been driven by increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). According to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO 2013), raw sugar production rose from 135,000 tons in 1990 to 430,500 tons by 2012,...