All Articles

This study investigates the relationships between financial inclusion, gender and household welfare. We used baseline data collected from a randomised control trial survey of maize farmers in Nigeria and computed multidimensional indices for financial inclusion and farmers’ household welfare.

This study examined the effect of collective marketing on mango income for 226 smallholder farmers in Mwala sub-county. The study employed an endogenous switching regression model to account for selection bias from observed and unobserved farmer attributes.

This study uses an online laboratory experiment and a post-experimental survey to test whether the Mastercard Foundation (MCF) scholarship programme causally influences the creation of cognitive social capital among University of Pretoria recipients.

One of the three components of Rwanda’s flagship anti-poverty programme, Vision 2020 Umurenge (VUP), is the provision of credit to relatively poor households, nearly all of them farmers. In this paper we estimate the impact of the programme using high-quality household survey data from 2013/2014 and 2016/2017.

The Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) has reformed the implementation of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP). The objective of FISP is to increase competitiveness in the agricultural sector among all key players (input suppliers, agro-dealers, banks, etc.), while improving farmers’ welfare.

Goat keeping is a common practice among rural farmers due to the adaptability of goats to harsh environments, their efficient forage conversion and rapid growth, and their multiple benefits, including the production of manure and high-quality milk.

Soil acidity is a major constraint to crop production in tropical regions. Although agricultural lime is one option to remediate acid soils, there is limited information on the potential returns on investments to liming by smallholders.

Evaluating the impact of agricultural practices helps policymakers and farmers in their decision-making. In Zambia, most households depend on agricultural activities, in particular maize production.

Using an original database from French archives on French trade statistics, this article undertakes a comprehensive study of the nature and dynamic of French sectoral trade for the period 1880 to 1912.

The literature on what drives crop failure and crop abandonment is scant. This paper explores the interplay between risk factors and crop abandonment. We examine the role of risk sources and risk management strategies in crop abandonment by smallholder maize farmers in Zambia.

This study investigated the food security effect of the adoption of improved maize varieties among farming households in Uganda using four waves of the Uganda National Panel Survey (UNPS) spanning the period 2013 to 2020.

Unexpectedly lower yield outcomes (downside risks) challenge farmers’ use of external inputs that can enhance crop productivity. Using household-level panel data collected from Ethiopia, we estimated the effects of crop diversification through maize-legume intercropping/rotation on maize yield distribution and downside risk.

This paper investigates the interdependence of decisions on the adoption of agricultural technology and the simultaneous interaction between adoption and food security situations of smallholders, using a sample of 260 households from rural Ethiopia.

Limited access to timely and adequate information has been identified as a major hindrance to smallholder agriculture in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This has negatively affected the socio-economic welfare of smallholder farmers, resulting in high numbers of food insecure households.

Baobab products provide cash income and supplement diets for local communities living in marginalised, arid and semi-arid regions. However, these products are neglected by research, selectively traded and considered underutilised. This study endeavours to narrow this information gap by analysing the determinants of baobab collectors’ choice of marketing channels in Kenya.

There is an emerging body of studies assessing the influence of resilience on household food security in developing countries. Yet no study has systematically analysed this theme in Zimbabwe, an area that we address.

This paper examines farmers’ preferences for an improved Bambara groundnut variety, the key attributes desired, factors influencing preference, and the number of attributes desired by smallholder farmers in Ghana.

This study evaluated the effect of agriculture, industry, manufacturing and the service sector on economic growth for the period 1991 to 2020 using the autoregressive distributed lag stationarity (ARDL) bounds-testing approach.

Index-based insurance has emerged as a compelling strategy for agricultural risk management in Africa, particularly in contexts where smallholder farmers are disproportionately exposed to climate-related hazards.

The current study investigated the impact of using information and communication technology-based weather information services on the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies.

This continent-wide review of studies on price transmission implemented for the global, regional cross-border, within-country urban and within-country rural market segments provides a broad overview of current conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa food markets and provides insights into how market development varies across regions and crops.

The transmission of price changes to markets has attracted renewed interest since the international food price spikes of 2007 to 2011. In response to this, this paper investigates the long-run behaviour of Nigerian cowpeas and yam tuber retail prices across space and time from 2000 to 2015.

Smallholder rural farmers are exposed to diverse idiosyncratic and covariate shocks that lead to high income and consumption volatility. Formal cash management tools, which are important for managing risk and volatility, often break down due to high information asymmetries and the transaction costs of operating in rural areas.

The recent increase in farmland investments in developing countries by private equity funds, large multinationals and sometimes foreign governments has attracted widespread attention and strong emotions from various interest groups.