The world food and financial crises threaten to undermine the real incomes of urban consumers in eastern and southern Africa. This study investigates patterns in staple food prices, wage rates, and marketing margins for urban consumers in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia between 1993 and...

• The Zambia Urban Consumption Survey, a survey of 1,865 urban households in Lusaka, Kitwe, Mansa, and Kasama, was conducted in August 2007 and February 2008 by the Central Statistical Office in collaboration with the Zambia Food Security Research Project. • Survey results indicate that in...

After two decades of de-urbanization, Zambia is again becoming increasingly urban. While the urban share of the population fell to 35% in 2000 due primarily to the decline of the copper industry, over half of Zambia’s people will be residing in urban areas by 2040. Given this urbanization...

This study uses nationally representative data from 360 farm households in Benin to estimate how access to storage technologies and storage losses from insects affects a smallholder African farmer’s decision to hold grain from production, in an environment of high price variability. We find...

For the great majority of small scale farming households in West Africa, labor is one of their most crucial factors of production. Yet, the dynamics behind these households' patterns of labor allocation are not well understood by planners and policy makers. This study argues that (a) a...

During the last several years there has been significant development in the energy situation. The present shortages and the resultant problems were not widely anticipated by the American public nor its elected leaders. Recognition of the current and possible future impacts of the energy shortage...

Supermarkets are rapidly penetrating urban food retail in Kenya and spreading well beyond their initial tiny market niche into the food markets of lower-income groups. Having penetrated processed and staple food markets much earlier and faster than fresh foods, they have recently begun to make...

Between December 1984 and July 1986, the Planning Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Development, in conjunction with the Rural Development Studies Bureau of the University of Zambia and Iowa State University conducted a rural household survey. This is referred to as the ZATPID I...

Social capital is a resource increasingly recognized as having important economic and social consequences. Robison and Siles (1999) examined some of these consequences at the U.S. state level and this study extends their efforts. Their 1999 study found important connections between the...

Crop income is the predominant source of income for most rural Mozambican households, accounting for 73% of rural household income on average in 2002, and greater than 80% of the total income of the poorest 40% of rural households. While the Government of Mozambique recognizes the need to...