All Articles

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.

La production du riz sous contrat a pour avantage de répondre aux exigences de la qualité de la production du riz et de satisfaire la demande intérieure du riz pour le pays. Cette étude a pour objectif d’analyser les critères d’insolvabilité des contrats des riziculteurs au Burkina Faso.

Since 2002, a range of South African policies have attempted to address the disproportionate burden of food and nutrition insecurity on the population. Yet malnutrition among the poor has worsened.

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.

This study applied the zero-inefficiency stochastic frontier (ZISF) to analyse the technical efficiency of 333 improved rice-farming households for the 2012/2013 farming season in Ghana.

Rural areas across the developing countries in every region of the world lag behind their urban counterparts in many important sectors and, most importantly, in improved water supply services.

This analysis sits against the backdrop of unsuccessful attempts to reindustrialise Africa. Zambia must diversify from copper dependency to agriculture and the agro-processing sectors, and the question is whether there is enough capacity to deliver jobs or growth.

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.

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.

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 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.

Many governments adopt agricultural policies that affect production incentives across commodities. In addition, severe market failures in the form of high marketing margins often lower the prices that farmers receive.

Soybean is one of the key legume crops that provides several financial benefits for farming households in Malawi. However, Malawi's persisting efforts to improve smallholder productivity and diversification have only translated into moderate improvements in food security outcomes.

This study investigates the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture, their nutritional status and those of their children. Growing empirical evidence suggests that there is a positive link, but that not all empowerment dimensions influence nutritional outcomes.

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 assesses the differences in technical efficiency of, and the cassava production systems employed by, male-managed (MMF) and female-managed (FMF) cassava farms in the Fanteakwa District of Ghana.

Kenya, like most countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa region, has continued to be overwhelmed by high and volatile food prices. In an effort to mitigate this problem, the government has implemented various trade and marketing policy instruments. The aim of this study is to examine whether the policies implemented have achieved their desired effects.

Poultry waste management and the energy demand have generated environmental and climate change concerns. Experts have suggested converting poultry waste to biogas energy through recycling to reduce these concerns.

Variability in climate and debility in soil fertility affect agrarian production, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and thus threaten food security. This has prompted the seed sector to introduce various varieties of climate-smart maize in Kenya and release them in the market. In contrast, there is little experiential insight into how the adoption of these varieties by small-scale farmers affects their household income.

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.

This study assesses the mechanism of the transmission of international price shocks to producer prices of coffee and cocoa in Togo. A threshold autoregressive (TAR) model was estimated using monthly series of international and producer prices of coffee and cocoa in Togo from 1994 to 2018.

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.

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.

This study examines the impact of privatisation on the productivity of smallholder sugarcane out-growers in Malawi using a case study of Dwangwa Cane Growers Limited (DCGL).