In this paper, we document an approach to capacity strengthening of parliamentarians in Ghana and attempt to gauge to what extent and under what conditions such investments could lead to better debates and informed policymaking to promote growth and poverty reduction. We traced a group of...

This study has been conducted in order to generate evidence of the visibility of exit from farm input subsidies in an African context. The study simulates the impact of alternative exit strategies from Malawi’s farm input subsidy program on maize markets. The simulation is conducted using...

The improved performance of the agricultural sector in Africa south of the Sahara during the most recent decade (2000–2010) has raised questions about the drivers behind the growth. Skeptics argue that rising commodity prices, as world markets experience a commodity boom, are the main...

This paper estimates the potential effects of achieving the agricultural goals set out in Iraq’s National Development Plan (NDP) 2013–2017 using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that raising agricultural productivity in accordance with the NDP...

The intergenerational effect of fetal exposure to malnutrition on cognitive ability has rarely been studied for human beings in large part due to lack of data. In this paper, we exploit a natural experiment, the Great Chinese Famine of 1959–1961, and employ a novel dataset, the China...

The study involved interviewing a large number of stakeholders in fertilizer value chain, collection of data on costs and margins from the key actors in the value chain, as well as household survey data. In this paper, we present the key findings from that study. In particular, the paper...

This study assesses whether the recent public and private efforts to improve farmers’ access to mechanical power in Ghana have had the intended effects on the country’s agricultural sector. Using panel survey data, this paper analyses the drivers of farm mechanization and its net...

The level of public spending on agriculture in Nigeria remains low regardless of the indicator used. Agricultural spending as a share of total federal spending averaged 4.6 percent between 2008 and 2012 and has been trending downward precipitously. In contrast, Nigeria recorded an annual average...

This paper contributes to our understanding of food policy–research partnerships and provides a review of the theory and empirical literature about the factors that contribute to effective food policy–research partnerships. The literature points to the emergence of organizational...

The development debate in Africa south of the Sahara is often cast as “agriculture versus nonagriculture.†Yet this view overlooks the heterogeneity within these broad sectors and the synergies between them. We estimate sectoral poverty–growth elasticities using economywide...