Financial cooperatives and microfinance institutions (MFIs) are the two major sources of rural finance in Ethiopia. Whereas MFIs are relatively new, financial cooperatives have existed for centuries in various forms. The coexistence of two different institutions serving the same group of people,...

type="main" xml:lang="de" <title type="main">Impact des coopératives agricoles sur l'efficacité technique des petits exploitants: Analyse empirique en Ethiopie</title> <p>A partir de données d'enquêtes de ménages en Ethiopie, cet article évalue l'impact des coopératives agricoles sur l'efficacité technique des petits...</p>

The focus on achieving financial efficiency by microfinance institutions in recent years raises a natural concern on their social outcome, outreach to the poor. Using a stochastic frontier approach on sample microfinance providers in Ethiopia, this paper analysed the effect of an increasingly...

The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by conditions which vary across geographical space. These conditions include basic agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and local population densities which represent both...

This essay investigates the relationship between rural household income growth and access to electricity, extension services and roads. Following Dercon et al (2009), I outline a household income growth model that includes access to these public goods as growth conditioners. I estimate the model...

Rural land titling has stronger impacts on farm investments for female title-holders than for male title-holders. This effect is particularly pronounced for investments which are less capital-intensive. The gendered impacts of smallholder ownership of land titles may have to do with systematic...

""Smallholders in Ghana, as elsewhere, are widely considered to be the largest as well as the most vulnerable component of the rural sector. Ghana professes national development objectives of reducing rural poverty through the increased productivity and commercialization of smallholder...

Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study...

This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real...