Governments in sub-Saharan Africa and their donors have made business investment a major policy goal, supported by a variety of incentives designed to support business investment in agriculture. However, little is known about the factors which influence agribusiness investment in Africa, and how effective these incentives have been. This paper examines the motivations of agribusiness investment, the effectiveness of government and donor policy incentives, and the relevance of these incentives for four different commercialisation pathways.
One way to create an innovation system (AIS) is through the formation and utilization of certain innovation configurations known as Multistakeholder Platforms (MSPs) and/or Innovation Platforms (IPs). CGIAR’s Challenge Programs on Water and Food (CPWF) use both MSPs and IPs to bring together a diverse set of relevant stakeholders to address common challenges in river basins globally, and in the Volta River Basin system in West Africa in particular.
Investment in research and innovation today will shape the agrifood systems of the future. The choices that you make during an innovation process will affect the future benefits and drawbacks of the innovations you help to create: for example, what types of people gain and lose, and what the effects are on the environment. Too often, these choices are not made consciously, and important issues are overlooked until it is too late.
This article presents a multi-stakeholder framework for intervening in root, tuber, and banana seed systems and in other VPCs. These crops are reproduced not with true seed but with vegetative planting material (e.g., roots,tubers, vines, stems, and suckers), called “seed” in this article. Seed systems for VPCs need to be designed differently than those for true seed, and coordination among stakeholders in seed systems is crucial
In this paper, is first described the design and development process of a modular ICT application system called GeoFarmer. Geofarmer was designed to provide a means by which farmers can communicate their experiences, both positive and negative, with each other and with experts and consequently better manage their crops and farms. We designed GeoFarmer in a collaborative, incremental and iterative process in which user needs and preferences were paramount.
This report, drawing on a rapid desk-based review, seeks to outline the potential role of Afican Advisory Services (AAS) in addressing climate change and explores how far AAS in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are able to respond to climatic and other pressures. Recommendations are outlined, indicating how AFAAS can help AAS to understand climate change better and become more ‘adaptive’ in their responses
In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household.
Literature is scanty on how public agricultural investments can help reducing the impact of future challenges such as climate change and population pressure on national economies. The objective of this study is to assess the medium and long-term effects of alternative agricultural research and development investment scenarios on male and female employment in 14 African countries. The authors first estimate the effects of agricultural investment scenarios on the overall GDP growth of a given country using partial and general equilibrium models.
This publication contains twelve modules which cover a selection of major reform measures in agricultural extension being promulgated and implemented internationally, such as linking farmers to markets, making advisory services more demand-driven, promoting pluralistic advisory systems, and enhancing the role of advisory services within agricultural innovation systems.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the Assets and Market Access Innovation Lab (AMA IL) to advance knowledge and understanding of development approaches and technologies in order to increase rural households’ ability to acquire, protect, and effectively utilize productive assets. This evaluation assessed AMA IL’s overall program performance across five themes: research quality; outreach and dissemination; policy; capacity building; program management; and future directions.