By Andrew Dorward, Rachel Sabates Wheeler, Ian MacAuslan, Chris Penrose Buckley, Jonathan Kydd, and Ephraim Chirwa
March 2006

There is widespread concern at continuing poverty and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and the poor record of agriculture in promoting broad based economic growth. African agriculture has performed poorly over the last forty years or so, with very low or negative per capita in much of this period, and much of the growth it has achieved has been from unsustainable land extensification rather than yield intensification (Kydd et al, 2004).