Rising demands for quality and safety measures in high-value agriculture and livestock markets have necessitated the creation of increasingly complex supply chains to manage the flow of goods and information among channel actors. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) can play a key role in...

Although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivities by at least 50 percent, food production on the continent is almost entirely rainfed. The area equipped for irrigation, currently slightly more than 13 million hectares, makes up just 6 percent of the total...

The ten ASARECA member countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda) have adopted, or are planning to adopt, a range of climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture (see Table 1 for a summary). Of the 26...

There is broad consensus among scientists that climate change is altering weather patterns around the world. However, economists are only beginning to develop tools that allow for the quantification of such weather changes on countries' economies and people. This paper presents a modeling suite...

Despite the promise of many new farm technologies, technology adoption rates in Ethiopia remain low. This paper studies the impact of social networks on technology adoption through social learning. In addition to geographic networks, intentional relationships are considered. The differential...

Effective poverty reduction programs require careful measurement of poverty status. Several studies have shown conceptually that assets reflecting productive capacity form a more robust basis for identifying the poor than do flow variables such as expenditures or income. Nonetheless, little work...

In much of rural Africa, high transaction costs limit farmers’ market participation and thus their potential for income growth. Transaction costs can affect not only whether a farmer sells product but also whether sales occur at the farm gate on at a market. If production behavior is related...

This paper reviews the purpose and potential of commodity exchanges in Africa. Drawing from the existing literature and using indicative empirics, it examines the conditions that enable successful exchanges, highlights the special challenges to setting up exchanges in Africa, and reviews...

There is widespread agreement that our ability to deliver sustainable food security for all will be challenged in three dimensions—population growth, constrained natural resources, and climate change. Investments in agricultural productivity are essential to dealing with these challenges....