News
Timely news and information about agricultural research in Africa. Collected from a variety of sources, we are also happy to accept your suggestions for relevant research to include.
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Agricultural Markets in West Africa: Frontiers, Agribusiness and Social Differentiation
June 1, 2005 / News By Kojo Sebastian Amanor Neoliberal policies have in recent years focused on introducing institutional reform to facilitate and regulate the operation of free markets. It is still assumed that the freemarket is the best mechanism to achieve efficient and equitable
Agricultural Markets in West Africa: Frontiers, Agribusiness and Social Differentiation
June 1, 2005 / News Neoliberal policies have in recent years focused on introducing institutional reform to facilitate and regulate the operation of free markets. It is still assumed that the freemarket is the best mechanism to achieve efficient and equitable growth, alongsidetechnical prescriptions. A
Key Challenges for Technology Development and Agricultural Research in Africa – 4
June 1, 2005 / News By Monty Jone Agricultural development is a sine qua non for improving livelihoods in Africa’s predominantlyrural economies, yet agricultural productivity has hardly improved and African food production percapita continues to decline. This is not because of a lack of planning
Neo-patrimonialism and Policy Processes
June 1, 2005 / News In the 1990s economic liberalisation replaced state support for agriculture across much of Southern Africa. As well as reducing costs, it was assumed that liberalisation would ensure food availability and access to food through positive effects on production and trade
Governing Technology Development: Challenges for Agricultural Research in Africa
June 1, 2005 / News There is little doubt that agricultural research is of critical importance to the future of agriculture in Africa. As an investment, it has been shown again afinnd again to deliver high returns, in terms of bothancial benefits (Alston et al.
Beyond Liberalisation: “Developmental Coordination” Policies for African Smallholder Agriculture
June 1, 2005 / News By Andrew Dorward, Jonathan Kydd and Colin Poulton This article argues for a fresh approach to agricultural policy in Africa, to exploit the strengths of both stateled and market-led development approaches pursued over the last 50 years, while avoiding their
Communities, Commodities and Crazy Ideas: Changing Livestock Policies in Africa
May 1, 2005 / News In the late 1990s a review of aid-assisted livestock projects included an assessment of sustained impact on poorer producers (Ashley et al. 1998). The review looked back over 35 years and analysed documents from more than 800 livestock projects funded
Too Much Inequality or Too Little, Inequality and Stagnation in Ethiopian Agriculture
May 1, 2005 / News The agricultural sector remains our Achilles heel and source of vulnerability …Nonetheless, were main convinced that agricultural based development remains the only source of hope for Ethiopia. (Prime Minister Meles Zenawi 2000). A powerful strand of thinking about the causes
Decentralisations in Practice in Southern Africa
June 19, 2003 / News By the SLSA Team IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 Decentralisation, like good governance or sustainable development, is one of those concepts everyone from the World Bank to top officials in national governments seems to think is a “good thing”.
Livelihoods in Crisis: Challenges for Rural Development in Southern Africa
June 19, 2003 / News By Ian Scoones and William Wolmer IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 Southern Africa is in the midst of a major food crisis. Fourteen million people are reported to be at risk. Most commentators agree that since around 1990,
Wild Resources Management in Southern Africa: Participation, Partnerships, Ecoregions and Redistribu
June 19, 2003 / News By William Wolmer and Caroline Ashley IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 In rural southern Africa, access to wild resources is critical to livelihoods and various attempts have been made by policy-makers to increase the income derived from them
Politics and Water Policy: A Southern Africa Example
June 19, 2003 / News By Alan Nicol and Sobona Mtisi IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 Access to and management of water resources is inherently political. Drawing on fieldwork from the Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa programme, largely undertaken in Zimbabwe, with some
Land and Livelihoods: The Politics of Land Reform in Southern Africa
June 19, 2003 / News By Edward Lahiff IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 Southern Africa today presents a wide spectrum of land policies, embracing a variety of forms of redistribution and tenure reform initiatives, utilising methods that range from consensual, market-based approaches to
The Rural Poor, the Private Sector and Markets: Changing Interactions in Southern Africa
June 19, 2003 / News By the SLSA Team IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003 One of the central tenets of much current development thinking in southern Africa is that market-oriented strategies and private sector involvement must be the basis for future economic growth.