Cotton is an unquestioned success of Zambia’s turn towards a market economy. After privatization in late 1994, seed cotton production rose from 32,000 metric tons (mt) to about 180,000 mt a decade later (three-year averages centered on 1994 and 2005). The number of farmers involved in the...

This report presents the preliminary findings of an evaluation of the 2006/7 agricultural input subsidies programme (AISP). The objectives are to feed back to stakeholders preliminary information about interim findings, proposals and issues for imminent decisions about the 2007/8 season. In...

A key role for USAID and its partners is to identify how their resources can best contribute to increasing the capacity of the private and public sectors in Mali to scale up their investments, and increase the impact of those investments, in relation to the food security dimensions of...

Zambia's record-breaking maize harvest of nearly 2.8 million metric tons (MT) in 2010 is a major achievement and a testimony to what input subsidies, output price incentives, and favorable weather can do to elicit a major supply response. Maize-growing smallholders harvested more than in...

Agriculture forms the foundation of Kenya’s economy. However, the information base on agriculture % including basic indicators on farmers’ input, production, and marketing behavior, household food consumption patterns, etc. % is weak and largely outdated. Agricultural policy is largely made...

With the risk of the drought in the agricultural production areas of Zambia, conservation farming (CF) was introduced as a set of technologies that can improve productivity while reducing plant stress due to moisture constraints. Under animal traction, CF involves using the Magoye ripper to...

The paper gives a brief description of the history and main institutional forms in the agricultural and rural financial services sector–commercial banks, the micro-finance industry, savings and credit cooperative societies, village banks, building societies and the Agricultural Finance...

With only a few months remaining, Zambia still has a long way to achieving the millennium development goal of halving the number of stunted children by the end of 2015. Almost half of the children in Zambia remain undernourished and 40% of them have stunted growth, a long term malnutrition...

This paper assesses the relationship between agricultural productivity and market participation and performance following an increase in market prices in Mozambique. We use panel data before and after the change in price regime to identify the relative importance of market access/participation...

This study compares models for university engagement with private and public sector employers in Africa. It compares engagement models in countries with more developed food systems (South Africa) and a sample of selected African countries with less developed food systems - Kenya, Uganda,...