All Articles

The adoption of improved agricultural technologies is known to significantly improve incomes, create more wealth, alleviate poverty and contribute to rural development in many developing countries.

This article examines the current state of food safety preparedness and response in three representative countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. We focus on foodborne diseases associated with the microbial contamination of animal-sourced foods.

The high volatility of the world cocoa price makes the millions of African cocoa farmers highly vulnerable to poverty. A large volatility in the value of an agricultural commodity is linked to the inelasticity of its supply or demand.

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.

This paper evaluates output supply and input factor demands for livestock products in the Southern rangelands of Kenya. A flexible translog profit function that permits the application of the primal approach to the output supply and factor demand analysis was estimated using household-level data.

One of the debates around sustainability and the scaling up of micro-financial services is the commercialisation of micro-finance institutions (MFIs). This paper examines the contribution of the commercialisation of MFIs to ensuring the sustainability of MFIs and in scaling up their commitment to serve their primary target groups: poor and marginalised people.

Consumers are increasingly becoming very concerned about food safety, with many giving preference to organic food products over conventional food products, which make use of agrochemicals with potential implications for health.

Zimbabwe has set poverty reduction targets in a changing climate, yet the implications of climate variability for poverty remain under-explored.

This study analysed the long- and short-run effect of economic policy uncertainty on agricultural growth in Nigeria. Annual data was collected from secondary sources and analysed using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and the associated bounds test.

This study investigates risk perceptions and management strategies among maize growers in the equatorial region of South Sudan. A cross-sectional study design included a survey questionnaire that was used to analyse data from 510 respondents.

This article analyses the level of integration in pastoral markets in Kenya using high-frequency data generated through a crowdsourcing endeavour. The vector error-correction model framework was used to estimate the causal relationships between the short- and long-run market price.

This paper examines determinants of the adoption of rainwater-harvesting technologies in a rain shadow area of southern Malawi. The most common ex situ technologies in the area were dams, and the widely used in situ technologies were box ridges, contour markers and swales.

Poverty in its various forms is widespread among smallholder farmers, including income poverty, rendering interventions that improve household income relevant. We employ a linear model on cross-sectional data collected from October to December 2015, with the preceding 12 months as the reference period.

Bien que l’économie africaine en général et celle de l’Afrique de l’ouest en particulier demeure fortement dépendante du secteur agricole, ce dernier s’avère être le moins productif parmi les trois grands secteurs considérés de l’économie, notamment le secteur agricole, industriel et des services.

This article investigated the role of cattle attributes in buyers’ choices and hedonic pricing in Benin. Cross-sectional data were collected on 347 market cattle transactions using the revealed preference method.

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.

Cette étude examine l'impact économique de l'utilisation des semences améliorées sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages ruraux au Cameroun.

Recognising potential selection bias due to non-randomness of the data, this study used propensity score matching on data from a nationally representative fifth Integrated Household Survey (IHS5) to investigate the effect of agriculture extension services on the technical efficiency of maize farmers in Malawi.

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.

This study aimed to bring forth empirical evidence of the effect of the sustained adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) on the technical and profit efficiency of farmers. Previous studies remain inconclusive about whether the adoption of SAPs has any bearing on the efficiency of maize farmers.

In sub-Saharan Africa, identifying estimates of consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for safe food continues to receive attention in the literature. Using experimental data from Nigeria, we examined the source of heterogeneities in preference and WTP for organically produced food.

This paper argues and provides empirical evidence that trade-offs and/or complementarities are inherent in technological options that shape the adoption of and land-use decisions in production systems involving multiple crops in Ethiopia.

There is a significant soybean yield gap in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Sustainable intensification of the agricultural sector to reduce such a yield gap is important. Increasing soybean productivity can meet the growing demand for food and feed when complemented with higher soy meal demand by the local livestock industry.

The adoption of improved agricultural technologies is very low in Tanzania, which has led to both low crop productivity and low production. This paper therefore analyses the factors that influence the adoption of improved seeds, inorganic fertilisers and a package of technologies by smallholder maize farmers in Tanzania