APRA blog

Rural electrification in Tanzania

July 4, 2018

Until recently, the quality of rice milling in Mngeta division, Tanzania was very poor, equating to extremely low shares of revenue for farmers selling rice in the local market. Traders often bought paddy directly at the farm gate, to be sold to – and later milled in – urban centers in Ifakara town, Morogoro, Dar-es-Salaam… Read more »

Navigating Fast Track: From Bust to Boom in Mvurwi, Zimbabwe

June 28, 2018

Background Commercial farming in the Mvurwi farming area in Zimbabwe – one of the hotspots for white-led commercial agriculture dating back to the 1930s – was expected to go bust after the implementation of Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 2000. The FTLRP resulted in major agrarian transformation in Zimbabwe’s rural landscape, where… Read more »

Combining capital and labour to help farmers commercialise in Mvurwi, Zimbabwe

June 25, 2018

Written by Toendepi Shonhe Patterns of agricultural commercialisation have changed over time in Zimbabwe – as the APRA Zimbabwe team observed during field studies in 2017, family farming in subdivided farms is on the increase across differentiated settlement models in the Mvurwi farming area, Mazowe District. Mvurwi comprises remaining large-scale commercial farms (LSCF), some medium-scale farms… Read more »

Price wars: an oil palm saga in Ghana

May 21, 2018

By Fred Dzanku, William Quarmine and Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey Image: ‘Jukwa Village and Palm Oil Production, Ghana,’ oneVillage Initiative (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) The grip of the ‘Big Two’ over Ghana’s oil palm processing industry has been loosened by the entrance of a third player, touting a novel and ‘farmer-inclusive’ business model. However, short-term shake-ups… Read more »

Groundnut marketing in Malawi: a review of farmer experiences

April 20, 2018

By Mirriam Matita et al Image: Groundnut harvesting 5 (CC BY-SA 2.0) As part of APRA’s research in Malawi, field work was conducted in Mchinji and Ntchisi districts to document farmer’s experiences of agricultural commercialisation since the 1980s, particularly of groundnuts. One of the constraints to agricultural commercialisation that was raised consistently by farmers was… Read more »

APRA in the news: Ghana Stakeholders brainstorm over new project

April 2, 2017

APRA is a five-year research programme that will focus on different pathways to agriculture commercialisation in sub-Saharan Africa. Based at IDS the project also has regional hubs in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Recent discussions amongst the Ghana hub and stakeholders in the agriculture sector have been captured in the Ghanaian media, Joy Online, marking… Read more »