With increasing recognition holding the promise of overcoming the outstanding problems faced by African agriculture, IAR4D faces the danger of being ‘blurred’ by past approaches and falling short of its potential to deliver the desired impacts in diverse multi-stakeholder, biophysical, socioAfJARE economic, cultural, technological and market contexts unless its actualisation and working is clearly understood.

Cet article analyse l’impact des chocs agro-climatiques sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages ruraux sénégalais à l'aide d'un modèle probit ordonné. La méthode du score de consommation alimentaire est utilisée pour appréhender l'état de la sécurité alimentaire des ménages. L’étude montre que 14% des ménages vivant en milieu rural sont à consommation alimentaire faible, 17% à consommation alimentaire limite, et 69% à consommation alimentaire acceptable.

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.

This study examines the productivity of smallholder groundnut farmers in North-eastern Mozambique using data for 2016 from two provinces with high total production of said crop.

Sustainable food systems are necessary not only as a channel for addressing the food security needs of the world’s growing population, but are also crucial in ensuring that the needs of future generations are not compromised.

Despite the crucial role played by Nile perch in the income of fishers around Lake Victoria, Tanzania, fishing pressure has increased in recent years and has led to overfishing and, consequently, a risk to the lake’s future sustainability and the fishers’ livelihoods. This study used data collected in 2018 from 268 randomly selected sample fishers at 10 landing sites across Lake Victoria.

This paper evaluates the extent to which changes in international wheat prices are transmitted to domestic markets in Kenya using an error correction model (ECM) that employs monthly producer price data for the period 2002 to 2020. Domestic wheat markets in Kenya were found to be strongly integrated while, international wheat markets were cointegrated with domestic prices at the port of Mombasa.

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.

Climate change and heat stress are expected to worsen the issue of water scarcity that is affecting the agricultural sector, among others through increased crop prices and costs, in addition to changes in yields.

Using the potential outcomes framework, we estimate the influence of the adoption gap, adoption drivers and impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties (IGVs) on groundnut yield among smallholder farmers in Nigeria.

The impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on women\s health, indicated by their body mass index (BMI), is examined using an instrumental variable estimation approach on a sample of 4 267 women.

This paper analyses the heterogeneous effects of membership of a farmer group on access to water, use of inorganic fertiliser, household incomes, and farm asset holdings. A sample of 401 irrigators in South Africa was analysed using propensity score matching. The study found that group membership had a positive effect on all four outcomes.

The world is facing unprecedented challenges from COVID-19, which is disrupting lives and livelihoods. The pandemic could profoundly affect the African continent and wipe out hard-won development gains, as sub-Saharan Africa heads into its first recession in 25 years.

This study compares the benefits of using digestate and compost in Burkina Faso. A mathematical programming model was used to simulate the advantages under three scenarios.

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.

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.

This study investigates how public agricultural expenditure can mitigate the effect of climate variability on banks’ agricultural credit supply in sub-Saharan Africa.

This study analyses the trade-offs between welfare (measured by income) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using a farm-level optimisation model that incorporates the predominant cereal (sorghum), legumes (groundnut, soybeans), livestock (cattle, goats and sheep) and trees (locust bean, camel’s foot) representative of production systems at two contrasting sites in northern Nigeria.

Climate change and its pronounced effects have greatly disfranchised the livelihoods of aquafarmers. To leverage these negative effects of climate change, climate-smart aquaculture (CSA) practices have been developed for adoption by farmers. However, it is not known whether these practices have made any meaningful contribution to farmers in terms of their livelihoods and resilience to the vagaries of climatic change.

The starting point for this article is the concept of a commodity exchange. A working definition is a physical or – more likely – electronic marketplace for buying, selling and trading commodities, whether ‘hard’ commodities, which typically are natural resources that must be mined or extracted (gold, rubber, oil, etc.), or ‘soft’ commodities, which are mainly agricultural products or livestock (coffee, corn, cotton, sugar, soybeans, etc.).

Cette étude explore l’effet de l’intégration des pays africains aux chaînes de valeur agricoles sur la sécurité alimentaire, en soulignant le rôle central des institutions.

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.

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.

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.