In developing countries across Asia, food marketing parastatals have played an important role in agricultural policy, especially with regard to government efforts to stabilize food prices. Three broad market failures constitute the primary arguments for this form of government intervention: a...

In 2013 the Bureaus of Agriculture in the regional states of Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of Ethiopia supported a program of direct marketing of certified seed by seed producers to farmers across 31 woredas (districts). This program stands in contrast to the...

The initial success of microfinance programs in the 1970s led pioneers to think that many essential problems of the poor might be resolved by access to credit alone -- the ability to acquire assets, to start businesses, to finance emergency needs and to insure against illness and disaster. Part...

In the context of the Ghanaian government’s objective of structural transformation with an emphasis on manufacturing, this paper provides a case study of economic transformation in Ghana, exploring patterns of growth, sectoral transformation, and agglomeration. We document and examine...

This paper examines the current status and recent changes in Ghana’s commercial seed system for field crops. It includes a review of present performance and an examination of the factors that might influence the course of seed system develop-ment in the near future. The paper is timely...