APRA NEWS
Journal Article: Heterogeneous Market Participation Channels and Household Welfare
January 8, 2024This paper uses panel data and qualitative interviews from southwestern Ghana to analyse farmers’ heterogeneous oil palm marketing decisions and the effect on household welfare. We show that despite the supposed benefits that smallholders could derive from participation in global agribusiness value chains via formal contracts, such arrangements are rare although two of Ghana’s ‘big four’ industrial oil palm companies are located in the study area. In the absence of formal contracts, farmers self-select into four main oil palm marketing channels (OPMCs). These OPMCs are associated with varying levels of welfare, with processing households and those connected to industrial companies by verbal contracts being better off. Furthermore, own-processing of palm fruits is shown to reduce gender gaps in household welfare. We also unearth community and household level factors that hamper or facilitate participation in remunerative OPMCs. These results have implications for development policy and practice related to inclusive agricultural commercialization.
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The third and final APRA e-Dialogue: Transition pathways and strategies for supporting more equitable and resilient food systems in Africa
March 3, 2022Starting in October 2021 and running through 2022, the e-Dialogue series on agricultural commercialisation, agrarian change and rural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa has examined a range of topics including the emerging challenges and regional realities of smallholder transformation and COVID-19’s effects on food systems and rural livelihoods. Now, in the third and final event of this series, we turn our attention to transition pathways and strategies for supporting more equitable and resilient food systems in Africa. This last e-Dialogue, to be held on Wednesday 23 March 2022, will seek to move the focus of food system transformations from ‘what needs to happen’ to ‘how to make it happen’ to support more equitable and inclusive forms of food system transformation.
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Land, Investment & Politics Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands: Book launch & discussion with the editors
February 22, 2022More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions’ pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality?
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COVID-19 e-dialogue: impacts on food systems and livelihoods
January 25, 2022Focusing on 9 February 2022, APRA, in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and Foresight4Food (F4F), will host an interactive e-dialogue on COVID-19 and its Effects on Local Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa.
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e-Dialogues on Agricultural Commercialisation, Agrarian Change and Rural Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa
January 25, 2022Who is benefitting as food systems and rural economies are transformed and who is at risk of being left-behind? Throughout 2022, the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) Programme of the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC), UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and Foresight4Food (F4F) will be convening a series of e-Dialogues to provide an in-depth… Read more »
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APRA researcher appointed to local government in Malawi!
December 20, 2021Congratulations to Professor Blessings Chinsinga on his appointment to the post of Minister of Local Government in Malawi.
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National policy dialogue: Agricultural commercialisation and smallholder transformation in Nigeria
December 6, 2021Relative to small-scale farms (SSFs), recent trends across sub-Saharan Africa show that medium-scale farms (MSFs) are accounting for an increasingly larger share of the total value of marketed agricultural products The rise of MSFs could substantially change the structure of the food system in future. The APRA Nigeria Workstream 1 Research Team, which includes researchers from Michigan State University, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, National Extension and Research Liaison, Zaria, and the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria, investigated this MSFs phenomenon and its implications on the livelihood outcomes of SSF families in Nigeria. The Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture, the Kaduna State Ministry of Agriculture and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development were collaborators on this study.
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Understanding the Nigerian cocoa industry: the Nigerian Cocoa Summit & Awards
November 29, 2021How has the Nigerian cocoa sector changed since the crop was introduced in the 1880s? What is the reality of this value chain now, in the country ranked fourth in cocoa production globally? What do stakeholders see for the future of the sector, and the thousands of livelihoods connected to it? These are all questions… Read more »
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APRA researchers to hold a national dissemination workshop in Ghana
November 26, 2021APRA researchers in Ghana are gearing up for a national dissemination event! The event will be filled with presentations from the two APRA teams working in the country (Work Streams 1 and 2), and, more generally, on APRA’s objectives, research projects and findings. The workshop will be held at 10.00 GMT on Tuesday, November 30th… Read more »
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APRA Ethiopia’s national dissemination workshop: A pathway to policy change?
November 26, 2021APRA Ethiopia researchers have spent years studying the country’s rice value chain and identifying its role in providing a pathway out of poverty for the farmers who engage in it. The team has explored the role of increased rice commercialisation for the observed agrarian changes and the livelihood trajectories on the Fogera Plain, and engaged with efforts both within and beyond the country to promote the sustainable development of the rice sector. Such efforts have included team members’ participation in events such as the East African Rice Conference in May 2021, which gathered representatives from other East African countries – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda – to identify policy reforms to transform Africa’s rice sector through scientific innovations.
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