Development Strategy and Governance

To understand how different sectors in an economy interact with each other, economywide analyses, such as the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, are often required. The database of a CGE model is usually the Social Accounting Matrix ...

This report has been defined in accordance with the initial terms of reference. I first tried to develop a vision of the long-term census and survey system through interviews held with diverse stakeholders. I thus identified the clients and their ...

Several Sub-Saharan African nations have experienced increased economic growth and political stability in recent years compared with the stagnation and turmoil of previous decades. Ghana is one of the biggest success stories of the region; the ...

Malnutrition rates among children 0-36 months and women of reproductive age in Nigeria are high and vary significantly across rural-urban locations, geopolitical regions, and agroecological zones, constituting a significant public health ...

Low fertilizer use is professed to be among the many reasons for low agricultural productivity in Nigeria. Fertilizer application, estimated at 13 kg/ha in 2009 by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, is far lower than the ...

Access to sufficient food and nutrients is essential for household welfare, as well as for accomplishing other development objectives. Households with insufficient access to food often face other challenges related to food insecurity including ...

This paper considers vulnerability reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from a more aggregated macro viewpoint. We focus on risk related to agriculture, since vulnerability and agriculture are intimately linked in SSA due to the location of the ...

Ghana has made considerable progress over the last 20 years in sustaining economic growth and reducing poverty. The Government of Ghana has declared its new development goal of reaching middle-income status by 2015. Achieving this goal will ...

This study investigated access to agricultural extension and rural water supply and assessed strategies to improve the provision of these services by strengthening accountability. The study paid special attention to the gender dimension of ...

In recent years access to safe and reliable water supplies has received increased government attention in Ethiopia. As a result, the national coverage rate for this service has gradually improved. Yet millions of people in rural areas still do ...

Agriculture is the backbone of Ghana’s economy, and this sector needs to play a key role if Ghana is to achieve the goal of becoming a middle income country by 2015. Despite its impressive progress in economic growth and poverty reduction, ...

In this paper we examine which farmers would be early entrants into weather indexinsurance markets in Ethiopia, were such markets to develop on a large scale. We do this by examining the determinants of willingness to pay for weather insurance ...

Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such ...

Decentralized delivery of public services has been promoted as a means to enhance citizen voice and make service provision more responsive to users. Ethiopia has undertaken two rounds of decentralization, making first the regional states and then ...

Agriculture employs three-quarters of the population of Malawi. It makes up more than forty percent of the economy and sixty percent of all exports. Yet productivity in agriculture—measured as the amount of output for a given amount of inputs—is ...

This study uses an economy-wide, dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model to analyze the ability of growth in various agricultural subsectors to accelerate overall economic growth and reduce poverty in Nigeria over the next years ...

An economywide, multimarket (EMM) model was developed for Rwanda to analyze the linkages and trade-offs between growth and poverty reduction goals at both macro- and micro-economic levels. The model includes 30 agricultural commodities or ...

Zambia has experienced strong economic performance since 1999. However, agriculture has not performed as well as the rest of the economy, and although the incidence of poverty has declined, it still remains high. The Zambian government, within ...

Rapid economic growth has failed to significantly improve poverty and nutrition outcomes in Tanzania. This raises concerns over a decoupling of growth, poverty, and nutrition. We link recent production trends to household incomes using a ...

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) includes a target of 6 percent annual agricultural growth, supported by the allocation of at least 10 percent of the national budget for agriculture. The Nigerian government has set ...

The majority of Nigeria’s smallholder farmers are often too poor to employ modern tools, such as tractors and plows, even with substantial government support. In this respect, an agricultural mechanization policy would need effective targeting ...

Public spending on agriculture in Nigeria is exceedingly low. Less than 2 percent of total federal expenditure was allotted to agriculture during 2001 to 2005, far lower than spending in other key sectors such as education, health, and water. ...

Participatory approaches are an increasingly prominent technique for designing agricultural strategies within Sub-Saharan Africa. However, such approaches are frequently criticized for either not involving enough stakeholders or limiting the ...

African countries tend to be affected by global agricultural policies in the same way as other economies but with much more severe economy-wide repercussions… The present discussion paper 1) examines the vulnerability of Africa economies ...

This paper examines the importance of achieving high agricultural growth as a means of accelerating Ethiopia’s economic transformation. The conclusions are that a high rate of agricultural growth has farreaching positive implications for ...

This paper has been prepared in support of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) roundtable in Ghana. The study also takes a fresh perspective on the role of agriculture for development in light of the global food ...

It is almost certain that Ghana will become one of the few African countries to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) earlier than the target year of 2015. The country is also in a good position to sustain the 6 percent ...

Agricultural Economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2005. His research topics are development, economic growth and growth linkages and poverty, agricultural productivity and trade. He has also worked in ...

The main objective of agricultural statistics is to provide information on agricultural production. The data collected include the range and quantity of crops and livestock produced; the amount of land put to crop or livestock production; how the ...

We analyze the evolution of Sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) over the past 40 years, looking for evidence of recent changes in growth patterns using a nonparametric Malmquist index. Our TFP estimates show a ...

Uganda’s economy remains heavily reliant on the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector contributes about 90 percent of total export earnings, generates about 23.7 percent of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and directly or indirectly ...

Reducing malnutrition, including undernutrition (insufficient calorie intake) and micronutrient deficiencies (insufficient intake of vitamins and minerals) is a high priority for Malawi and many developing country governments, closely linked to ...

Developing countries allocate scarce government funds to investments in rural areas to achieve the twin goals of agricultural growth and poverty alleviation. Choices have to be made between different types of investments, especially ...

Today’s resource boom in Africa, driven by Asian economic growth, offers new opportunities for resource-rich African countries. Contrary to the experience of previous booms, however, most mining profits now accrue to foreign companies, ...

The lack of updated information about food security is of concern to many countries, especially during and after economic crises, natural disasters, and conflicts. In this paper we present an analytical framework for assessing the effects of such ...

The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program of Uganda is an innovative public-private extension service delivery approach, with the goal of increasing market oriented agricultural production by empowering farmers to demand and ...

This study analyzes the application of an input voucher program implemented in 2009 in two Nigerian states, Kano and Taraba. Using primary data collected from 1000 households, we explore the effect of the voucher program on the quantity and ...

The Ghana Strategy Support Program (GSSP) aims to build the capacity of agricultural stakeholders in Ghana to develop and implement agricultural and rural devel-opment policy reforms. This summary outlines findings from an IFPRI-commissioned ...

This paper highlights the difference between secure investor property rights and loosely defined individual property rights. Globalization and fiscal decentralization have intensified this difference. On the one hand, in the presence of mobile ...

CD-Rom One important impediment to improved policies and investments for poor and rural people in Africa has been a lack of data on actual conditions. To begin to help fill this data gap, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) ...

Recent trends in agricultural growth and food security in Eastern and Central Africa (ECA) have been discouraging. With very low labor productivity, yields, and growth rates, agriculture is unable to keep up with population growth or achieve the ...

Bart Minten, a Belgian citizen, joined IFPRI as a senior research fellow in December 2006. His research at the New Delhi office will focus on the effects of agri-business development and changes in agricultural marketing on the structure of food ...

Fatalism is considered pervasive, especially in many poor communities. In this paper, we explore whether fatalistic beliefs have implications for the attitudes and behavior of poor rural households toward investment in the future. To explore the ...

Bingxin Yu joined the Development Strategy and Governance Division of IFPRI in 2004 to work on development strategy issues. She has a B.S. in Management Science from University of Science and Technology of China, M.S. in Biometry/Statistics and ...

Bioenergy—that is, biofuels of biological and renewable origin, like bioethanol, biodiesel, and biomass for energy—is the subject of increasing attention around the world. Oil prices have climbed to unprecedented heights, and concerns about the ...

Large private investments in biofuels are presently underway in Mozambique. This paper uses an economywide model to assess the implications of these investments for growth and income distribution. Our results indicate that biofuels provide an ...

Bjorn Van Campenhout obtained his PhD in Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven (KULeuven) in 2009. During his PhD, he was employed as a Research Assistant at the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IOB) of the University ...

A key objective of China’s reform program was to reduce distortions in the economic system and enhance growth. However, when implemented in incremental and partial ways, local governments or individuals have chance to capture rents inherent ...

The Agricultural Policy Support Facility (APSF) is an initiative to strengthen evidence-based policymaking in Nigeria in the areas of rural and agricultural development. Facilitated by the Nigeria Strategy Support Program of the International ...

Ghana’s “market queens,” itinerant traders who purchase tomatoes from rural farms and bring them to the large urban markets, are accused of acting as a cartel, both driving down the price farmers receive and driving up the price urban consumers ...

The Ethiopian government has been promoting a package-driven extension that combines credit, fertilizers, improved seeds, and better management practices. This approach has reached almost all farming communities, representing about 2 percent of ...

The Federal Government of Nigeria, through the FMAWR, envisions improving its food security by facilitating equitable access, availability and affordability of quality foods to all Nigerian. This vision has become more important as global food ...

This paper investigates children’s time allocation to schooling, home production, and market production using a unique data set collected from northern Mali. Production shocks from harvest period pest infestations induce households to ...

CONTENTS: Introduction: China’s agricultural development: challenges and prospects, Xiao-Yuan Dong, Shunfeng Song and Xiaobo Zhang. Overview of the Challenges and Options: High performing Asian economies: retrospect and prospect, Robert W. ...

So far in this first decade of the 21st century, more than 1 billion people are subsisting on less than US$1 per day, and more than 800 million people are suffering from hunger. Many countries, most notably in Asia, have made spectacular success ...

This paper uses both a global and local perspective to assess the impacts of climate change on the Yemeni economy, agriculture, and household income and food security. The major impact channels of climate change are through changing world food ...

Using data from microenterprises of the handloom sector in four regions of Ethiopia, the paper shows that clustering, through specialization and division of labor, can lower entry barriers by reducing the initial capital required to start a ...

In the second half of the last century, both India and China have undergone major transitions and have moved to more liberalized economies. This paper relates the observed patterns in regional inequality to major events during this period. ...

Since 1996, a growing coalition of stakeholders from the private sector, government and donor communities has promoted a new package of agronomic practices for smallholders in Zambia. The conservation farming (CF) system they advocate involves: ...

The importance of agriculture in Nigeria’s economy cannot be understated. Farming and livestock rearing is the main livelihood for over 70 percent of households in the country. In 2008, agriculture contributed 42 percent of the country’s GDP, ...

Agriculture is the principal source of food and livelihood in Nigeria, and employs nearly three-quarters of the nation’s work force. Over the past two decades, agricultural yields have stayed the same or declined. Although there has been a ...

Rural producer organizations, such as farmers’ organizations or rural cooperatives, offer a means for smallholder farmers in developing countries to sell their crops commercially. They hold particular promise for Sub-Saharan Africa, where ...

An economywide, multimarket model is constructed for Ghana and the effects of agricultural soil erosion on crop yields are explicitly modeled at the subnational regional level for eight main staple crops. The model is used to evaluate the ...

A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government’s stimulus package on China’s economic growth. The model is first used to capture the actual ...

Many countries have ambitious crop insurance programs to assist farmers in coping with risks. On a global basis, several billion dollars are spent each year on public subsidies for such programs. Given the high costs and the alternative uses of ...

Ethiopia’s crop agriculture is complex, involving substantial variation in crops grown across the country’s different regions and ecologies. Five major cereals (teff, wheat, maize, sorghum and barley) are the core of Ethiopia’s agriculture and ...

The key motivation behind this study is to explore the many patterns of interactions between economic and non-economic factors in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa) in order to map out a typology of different types of country ...

This paper explores disparities in local public service provision between decentralized districts in Ghana using district- and household-level data. The empirical results show that districts’ geographic locations play a major role in shaping ...

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. The 2006 provisional census counted over 140 million people (United Nations 2007), 64 percent of whom live in rural areas. These rural areas are undergoing radical, noticeable change, particularly ...

The substantial differences in agricultural productivity between Asia and Africa can be largely explained by differences in use of modern inputs. The evidence suggests that better access to infrastructure (such as roads and irrigation) and ...

Decentralization has the potential to improve the accountability of government and lead to a more efficient provision of public services. However, accountability requires broad groups of people to participate in local government. Thus, voter ...

Despite recent studies on improved seed varieties estimating the adoption rates of maize in 1998 at 40 percent (Manyong et al. 2000) and rice at 60 percent (Larsson 2005), true adoption rates appear to be unknown. This knowledge gap exists due to ...

Small-scale private irrigation (SPRI) schemes make up most of the irrigated area in Nigeria, although they constitute only about three percent of the cultivated area in the country. Farmers’ demand for SPRI is potentially affected by diverse sets ...

Les récentes tendances des cours des denrées alimentaires – niveaux plus élevés et plus grande volatilité – reflètent les prédictions d’un certain nombre d’experts. Compte tenu de la complexité de l’écheveau des facteurs influençant la sécurité ...

“Recent estimates showing increase in the incidence of poverty in Uganda has kindled interest in understanding the factors that cause changes in poverty, as the reversal of the positive trend in the 1990s threatens the government’s ...

After a brief tour of the Mazubi Farms, the retreat began with a welcome by Ms. Valerie Rhoe, Program Coordinator, IFPRI. The welcome address highlighted the importance of updating the FMAWR agriculture strategy based on evidence. Dr. Shashi ...

“The choices that smallholder farmers are able to make are strongly conditioned by the geographic conditions in which they live. The importance of this fact for rural development strategy is not lost on policy makers. For example, the ...

IFPRI and FANRPAN outlined and managed a highly participatory process involving high-level policymakers, senior representatives of a range of stakeholder agencies, and respected scientific leaders, who came together for an integrated series of ...

The Digital Food Security Atlas (DFSA) for Yemen expands the conventional concept of an atlas by allowing users to create their own maps in an interactive way. This innovative tool allows policymakers, analysts, researchers, and the interested ...

Decentralization is expected to lead to greater efficiency in the allocation of public resources, as subnational governments are said to have better information than central government about the needs for and requirements of public services in ...

The vast majority of empirical literature on “flying geese” examines industrial relocation across national boundaries, in particular in Asia. However, few studies have empirically tested whether this kind of “flying geese” pattern of industrial ...

The migration of household members is potentially an attractive pathway out of poverty for many rural households in developing countries. Such households face the challenge of maintaining or improving their livelihoods in the presence of capital ...

Developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, continue to face insurmountable challenges in building and sustaining capacity for development. Although donor assistance for capacity development has been estimated to be about 25 percent ...

Malawi suffers frequent droughts and floods. In an economy that is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, it is crucial to understand the implications of these extreme climate events. Not only are rural livelihoods affected due to the ...

The paper develops a metric of structural transformation that can account for the production of new varieties of goods embodying advancements in technological know-how and design. Our measure captures the dynamics of an economy’s ...

The extent to which growth reduces poverty has been disputed for years, as has the controversy surrounding trade-offs between policies that seek growth and those that address equity. Structural models linking economic growth and the distribution ...

Ethiopia enjoyed remarkable economic growth from 2004/05 to 2008/09, in large part due to increases in foreign transfers and capital inflows combined with expanded domestic credit to fund major increases in private and public investments in ...

Encouraging signs of growth acceleration in Africa may herald a new development era of rapid transformation. In an effort to promote the future success of African transformation, we herein provide an extensive literature review on development ...

Few observers would have predicted the dramatic changes over the past few months in the Arab world. Arab governments appeared to be in tight control, and many Arab economies were growing around or above the world average over the past few years. ...

We use a dynamic CGE model to quantitatively assess the economywide impact of HPAI in Ghana. The likely effect of an avian flu outbreak is modeled as demand or supply shocks to the poultry sector. Our analysis shows that, while chicken is a quite ...

“This paper uses an asset-base framework to analyze the determinants of rural growth and sustainable poverty reduction for the three poorest countries in Central America: Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua…Using a combination of GIS ...

This paper examines European Union (E.U.) demand for chilled fish fillets assuming product heterogeneity due to country of origin and assesses the structural adjustment in demand as indicated by the increase in imports from Sri Lanka since the ...

Much of Nigeria’s recent economic growth can be attributed to its non-oil economy—primarily agriculture. But the recent agricultural growth has been driven mainly by expansion in areas planted while productivity has remained flat or declining. ...

Nigeria’s economic performance since 2002 has improved, with growth averaging about 7.3 percent during 2002–07 (Global insight 2008). While the production of cassava, rice, and maize has responded to the associated improved policy ...

Malnutrition is widespread in Nigeria, especially in rural areas. Nigerians are vulnerable to chronic food shortages, erratic supply, poor quality food, and fluctuating food prices. The huge investment in ensuring food and nutrition security for ...

Uganda has experienced strong economic growth in recent years with GDP growth among the highest in Africa at an average annual rate of 7.2 percent from 2000-2008 (WDI, 2009). The most recent study by the World Bank shows that strong poverty ...

A Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavior assumption about equal marginal returns of non-land inputs among crops, this ...

During the period of Nepal’s ninth Five-Year Plan (1997–2002), agricultural growth in the predominantly rural society was disappointing. The recent peace process, however, gives the country new opportunities to develop its economy with less ...

Precise agricultural statistics are essential for planning and evaluation of agricultural investments to improve the productivity and profitability of smallholder farming systems. However, accurately estimating crop yields is never easy and is ...

The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by conditions which vary across geographical space. These conditions include basic agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and ...

Under the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), implemented from 2005/06 to 2009/10, Ethiopia achieved rapid economic growth and laid a foundation for future growth by making substantial investments in ...

Traditional authorities are powerful leaders alongside the state in Ghana. The chieftaincy has been resilient to “modernization”—maintaining land rights, allegiance from citizens, and influence in rural communities. Nonetheless, there are few ...

“Identifying growth poles in the SSA region, strengthening linkages and generating mutual benefits across African countries is an important part of the strategy to promote agriculture-led growth at the Africa-wide scale. Using agricultural ...

The timely availability of seeds at planting time is considered one of the important factors for faster improved seed adoption in Nigeria. There is a lack of empirical information on how much more farmers are willing to pay (WTP) for seeds at ...

The traditional literature emphasizes the causal role of finance in promoting industrial growth. China’s rapid industrialization over the past several decades, which has occurred in the absence of well-functioning financial markets, seems ...

While, politically speaking, China has a centralized government structure with strong top-down mandates, under the country’s current fiscal system, local governments are responsible for providing most local public goods and services. Large ...

Yemen has been facing severe development challenges in recent years, but rapidly depleting oil and water resources combined with large population increases and a lack of job-creating growth are making a difficult situation even more complicated. ...

How households adjust their consumption in response to changes in prices and income is crucial determinant of the effects of various shocks to market prices and commodity supplies. These adjustments in demand are particularly significant in ...

Both availability and access issues underpin Ethiopia’s food security challenges. The country is mostly dependent on drought-exposed, rain fed agriculture, and high transaction costs inhibit trade in staples. Most of the population lives in rural ...

Food-for-Education (FFE) programs can help Uganda fight malnutrition and hunger while broadening access to primary education. Whether these programs involve in-school feeding or take-home rations, they have the potential both to improve student’s ...

In spite of remarkable growth in Ethiopia’s agricultural production and overall real incomes (GDP/capita) from 2004/05 to 2008/09, prices of major cereals (teff, maize, wheat and sorghum) have fluctuated sharply in both nominal and real terms. ...

South Africa’s high involuntary unemployment and small informal sector are attributed to an underperforming formal sector and barriers to entry in the informal sector. This paper examines the economywide linkages between the formal and informal ...

The paper develops a framework for the design and analysis of pluralistic agricultural advisory services and reviews research methods from different disciplines that can be used when applying the framework. Agricultural advisory services are ...

The community-driven development (CDD) approach has become increasingly popular because of its potential to develop projects that are sustainable, are responsive to local priorities, empower communities, and more effectively target poor and ...

The community-driven development (CDD) approach has become increasingly popular because of its potential to develop projects that are sustainable, are responsive to local priorities, empower local communities, and more effectively target poor and ...

Gender analysis focuses on the different roles and responsibilities of women and men and how these affect society, culture, the economy and politics. For example, important differences exist between women and men in their quality of life; in the ...

This paper uses an asset-base framework to analyze the determinants of rural growth and sustainable poverty reduction for the three poorest countries in Central America: Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua…Using a combination of GIS mapping ...

Gissele Gajate Garrido received her PhD in Economics from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on June 2010. She also holds a Masters in Economics from UCLA and graduated with honors from Universidad del Pacífico (Peru). She has worked ...

Poverty in rural India has declined substantially in recent decades. This steady decline in poverty was strongly associated with agricultural growth, particularly the green revolution, which in turn was a response to massive public investments in ...

Nutrition is increasingly recognized as an important dimension of economic development, yet relatively little is known about the relationship among development policies, economic growth, and nutrition outcomes. Advancing the knowledge in this ...

“This study assesses which agricultural subsectors have the strongest capacity to drive economic growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia, and what kind of agricultural and nonagricultural growth is needed to achieve the millennium ...

“Trade liberalization is a central part of South Africa’s post-Apartheid development strategy. However, despite considerable reforms, the country has failed to generate pro-poor growth, with both unemployment and inequality worsening ...

Heather joined DSGD as a Senior Research Assistant supporting the ReSAKSS Africa project. She received her Master’s Degree from Columbia University in May 2011, with a concentration in Economic and Political Development in Africa. In 2005, she ...

Rising world prices for fuel and food represent a negative terms-of-trade shock for Mozambique. The impacts of these price increases are analyzed using various approaches. Detailed price data show that the world price increases are being ...

This paper estimates the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and the rest of South Africa (RSA). We extend previous studies by employing an integrated analytical framework that combines the following: firm-level surveys of workers’ ...

This paper estimates hedonic models of rental prices to investigate household preferences regarding water services in rural Guatemala. Estimated values for water services are compared across municipal, private, and community-managed water ...

This study constructs a regional CGE model of China to analyze the differential regional impacts of China’s WTO accession on agricultural production, trade, and farmers’ income. The results show that China’s WTO accession will ...

We develop a detailed trade analysis to assess the potential welfare impacts of a free trade agreement (FTA) on the agricultural sector of southern African countries and to determine opportunities and challenges faced by the region as a ...

Rural households in developing economies frequently use precautionary saving to cope with income risk. Such prudent behavior can be strengthened in transition economies where more risks are typically faced by households during and after reforms. ...

While the role of public investment in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction is widely recognized, it is not clear how governments can mobilize these resources and use them efficiently and effectively. Exploring these issues in the ...

The overall objective of this paper is to develop an appropriate conceptual and analytical framework to better understand how prospects for growth and poverty reduction can be stimulated in rural Honduras. We employ complementary quantitative and ...

Despite remarkable economic growth in the past 30 years, China remains a developing nation. More than 135 million people live on less than $1 a day, with the majority of those living in rural areas. Emerging challenges include increased regional ...

In Uganda, agricultural extension has been hotly debated since the implementation of the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program in 2001. Conceived as a demand-driven approach and largely publicly funded with services provided by ...

Numerous studies indicate that agricultural production is sensitive to climate variability, and lack of infrastructure in developing countries increases vulnerability to extreme climate events. In Ethiopia, the historical climate record indicates ...

This paper provides details of the analysis done for Ethiopia’s background study for its implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The analysis provides an assessment of agricultural growth options ...

Kenya is vulnerable to avian flu given its position along migratory bird routes and proximity to other high-risk countries. This raises concerns about the effect an outbreak could have on economic development. We use a dynamic computable general ...

Why has eradicating hunger and poverty proved difficult despite its being a declared goal of the international development community for more than half a century? Why has the number of hungry people increased in recent years? Why is poverty ...

Undernutrition remains a major source of human suffering and an obstacle to national economic and human development in many African countries. This report investigates undernutrition’s persistence, drawing on case studies of the public ...

Decentralization reforms have been the overwhelming response to failures in the targeting of public resources by the central state in developing countries. The policy debate on decentralization typically revolves around several a priori ...

This paper evaluates the impacts of access to infrastructure on development of handloom weaving clusters in Ethiopia based on a survey collected in both urban and rural areas. Geographical clustering enables entrepreneurs with limited capital to ...

Rural non-farm development plays a key role in generating employment in many developing countries. Clustering is an important industrial organization in the rural non-farm sector. Based on primary surveys of both urban and rural handloom weaver ...

Agriculture is at the core of the livelihoods of most rural households in Uganda. It is a major engine for overall economic growth and possibly the single most important pathway out of poverty in the rural space. Although measures to enhance the ...

The need for agricultural ministries to have the capacity to develop appropriate policies and effectively implement them is becoming increasingly important as African countries, following on their commitment to Comprehensive Africa Agriculture ...

This study assessed the capacity for designing and implementing agricultural and rural development policies, strategies, and programs in Nigeria. Data for this study were derived from initial consultations at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture ...

In Nigeria, conventional financial institutions serve only about 35 percent of the active population, and the poor, especially women, have limited access to financial services. Private sector-led microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly ...

The Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) Secretariat has played an important and vital role in the design and delivery of agriculture policy and planning services in Uganda since 2000. Originally established as a mechanism for cross- and ...

This paper tests a series of prominent hypotheses regarding how institutions, geography, and trade interact to influence income per capita using a novel spatial econometric approach to control for both spillovers among neighboring countries and ...

Migration and remittances can be used by rural households as a means of insurance, investment, and income augmentation. Ample attention has been given to studying international remittance flows, since for many countries such transfers comprise a ...

This paper uses a two-stage conditional maximum likelihood procedure and new data from Ghana to identify the determinants of rural-urban migration at the individual, household and community levels, with a particular focus on rural services. The ...

This paper proposes a simple methodology to estimate the agricultural spending that will be required to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015 (MDG1) in 30 sub-Saharan African countries. This method uses growth-poverty ...

Public investments have contributed significantly to agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in rural areas, and to urban poverty reduction through growth in the national economy and lower food prices. Without such investments, ...

Agriculture has a central socioeconomic position in Ghana. This sector accounts for about 65 percent of the work force, about 40 percent of the gross domestic product, and about 40 percent of foreign currencies acquired through exports. Although ...

There have been intensive debates on the role of aid in promoting economic development in developing countries by using cross-country analyses. Cross-country regression assuming linear relationship between aid and growth and without taking into ...

James Garrett has been based in Maputo, Mozambique, since 2009 . There he leads and manages the Mozambican Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System. The program is a multi-institutional collaboration between IFPRI, IWMI, ICRISAT, and the ...

Jose Funes, has joined IFPRI as a Senior Research Assistant in DSG. He is originally from Honduras and received his undergraduate degree in Agriculture and Natural Resources from Zamorano University, Honduras. Upon graduation, he worked for the ...

Kamiljon Akramov is a Research Fellow at Development Strategy & Governance Division. He conducts research on governance and development policy issues using applied econometric analysis. His focus is on aid effectiveness, institutional change, ...

Katrina is a post-doctoral fellow with the Development Strategy and Governance Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) South Asia. She is an applied microeconomist ...

Ajaikaiye and Olusola (2003) observed that the knowledge system of any progressive society performs a pivotal function in its development. However, they note that “in spite of this recognition, the attention given to Nigeria’s knowledge system ...

Kristin Davis, a U.S. national, is seconded to the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services based in Zurich, Switzerland. She joined IFPRI in November 2004 as a postdoctoral fellow. Prior to joining IFPRI, she worked in agricultural development ...

Uganda’s significant economic growth over the last twenty years seemed to create favorable conditions for increased agricultural productivity, but agricultural productivity has failed to increase concordantly. As a result, most increases in ...

“This research report on India addresses an important policy issue faced by policy-makers in many developing countries: how to allocate public funds more efficiently in order to achieve both growth and poverty-reduction goals in rural ...

Access to guaranteed markets for produce and for the acquisition of inputs is a major problem confronting smallholders… The questions addressed by this research are: (a) how can agricultural contracts be enforced in the face of Ghana’s weak ...

The livestock is an important sub-sector within Ethiopia’s economy in terms of its contributions to both agricultural value-added and national GDP. Between 1995/96 and 2005/06, the livestock sub-sector’s share averaged 24 percent of agricultural ...

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of differential local food price increases on various household groups. Taking ...

This paper examines how political institutions and local power structures interact with and influence local public resource allocation in the Indian state of Karnataka. We use data from 80 village councils and 225 villages to examine how this ...

Over the last several years, the Ethiopian government has committed substantial resources for the expansion of public services and infrastructure in rural areas. To what extent do these investments and services reach different social and economic ...

Despite the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which brought to an end 20 years of civil war in the Sudan, this country continues to experience smaller-scale conflicts, particularly around access to and control of natural resources. Some ...

Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of resource booms often concentrate on the short-run Dutch disease effects of public expenditure, ignoring the possible long-term effects of alternative revenue-allocation options and the ...

How research contributes to the policy process in developing countries in general, and in Nigeria more specifically, is not well understood. Yet such understanding is a critical part of doing effective policy research. This has become especially ...

A key consideration in planning action to assist poor and hungry households is simply to have a good understanding of where they live and the characteristics of those locations. For the past 10 years, poverty researchers at the World Bank, ...

Margaret McMillan is an associate professor of economics at Tufts University. She has published widely in the areas of international trade and investment focusing primarily on developing countries. Understanding the distributional consequences of ...

This report focuses on demand-side constraints on agricultural growth and their implications for three broad alternative agricultural development strategies: promoting traditional exports, developing nontraditional exports, and increasing food ...

Meagan Keefe joined IFPRI as a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow through the Congressional Hunger Center in July of 2007. Through her fellowship, she worked for the Development Strategy and Governance Division in IFPRI’s regional office ...

This paper examines a subjective measure of child labor as an alternative to hours data for eliciting the distribution of children’s time between work, school, and leisure. The subjective child labor questions that were developed have two primary ...

Mehrab Malek joined the Development Strategy and Governance Division as a Senior Research Assistant in August 2010. He received his Master of Public Policy in June 2010 from the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. ...

“Do the countries which grow share the same features as those which decline? How can some countries achieve such long-term sustainable growth while others fail so badly? This paper builds on the emerging literature on growth asymmetries by ...

The study attempts to measure the total benefits from rice varietal improvement research in China and India using variety adoption and performance data over the last two decades. It then uses genetic or pedigree information to partition the total ...

Nazaire Houssou is an agricultural economist and postdoctoral fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD), which he joined in 2012. Nazaire received his PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Hohenheim, Germany ...

“This paper describes the dramatic cassava transformation that has taken place in Nigeria and Ghana over the past 50 years. From a rural subsistence crop, cassava has become a major cash crop sold in urban markets, a source of livestock ...

Despite their disappointing performance in the recent past, fertilizer subsidies have re-emerged as a tool in the agricultural strategies of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The new paradigm for fertilizer subsidies calls for use of such ...

This study analyzes growth options in agricultural sub-sectors to accelerate overall economic growth and reduce poverty in Nigeria in the next nine years (2009-17) using an economy-wide, dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model. The ...

Although the role of industrial policy in economic development is a frequent topic of debate in both the literature and the political arena, most such discussions focus on industrial policymaking at the national level. Using a case study of a ...

Knowledge of the characteristics and size of the agricultural input sector of a country is critical for policymakers to design appropriate interventions that not only foster growth in the sector, but also support the agricultural development ...

This study develops an analytical framework to account for sources of rapid economic growth in China. The traditional Solow approach includes only two sources, i.e. increased use of inputs and technical change. We expanded the approach to include ...

Paul A. Dorosh is the Division Director of the Development Strategy and Governance Division. He was the Deputy Division Director of IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance Division from June 2010 to April 2011. From August 2008 through June ...

Le potentiel agricole de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) est immense. Un calcul rapide indique si les rendements des 80 millions d’hectares de terres cultivables de la RDC venaient à s’aligner sur ceux des frontières de production ...

It has been widely documented that the poor spend a significant proportion of their income on gifts even at the expense of basic consumption. We test three competing explanations of this phenomenon—peer effect, status concern, and risk ...

Petroleum subsidy reform is increasingly seen as an opportunity for consolidating public finances and fostering sustainable economic development. Yemen, as the country with the lowest per capita income in the group of countries with a high level ...

Cereal production and marketing is the single largest sub-sector within Ethiopia’s agriculture. It dominates in terms of its share in rural employment, agricultural land use, and calorie intake, as well as its contribution to national income. The ...

Although the Nigerian economy depends significantly on the oil sector, agriculture remains its mainstay. Agriculture contributed 42 percent of Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008 (National Bureau of Statistics). Agriculture is the ...

A primary motivation for this study is to identify a key set of policy options for improving fertilizer markets in West Africa (among Economic Community of West African States member countries) in ways that ultimately will help improve the ...

Focusing on a remote area in rural China, we use a panel census of households in 26 villages to show that socially observable spending has risen sharply in recent years. We demonstrate that such spending by households is highly sensitive to ...

As in many developing countries, poverty reduction is a primary development goal in Malawi. The country is committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek, among other things, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Over the ...

Despite the promise of many new farm technologies, technology adoption rates in Ethiopia remain low. This paper studies the impact of social networks on technology adoption through social learning. In addition to geographic networks, intentional ...

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium approach to simulate two opposing views describing regional trade agreements either as building blocks for or stumbling blocks to multilateral trade liberalization. This study focuses on the free ...

This paper investigates price transmission for agricultural commodities between world markets and the Ugandan market in an attempt to determine the impact of world market prices on the Ugandan market. Based on the realization that price formation ...

We identify a set of development priorities for agriculture that cut across West Africa, at both the country and the regional level, to achieve economy-wide growth goals in the region. To do this, we adopt a modeling and analytical framework that ...

As policymakers decide how to allocate public spending to achieve higher growth and poverty reduction, they need a clear understanding of how public investments translate into development outcomes. In many cases policymakers also need better ...

Para decidir cómo asignar el gasto público de manera de lograr un mayor crecimiento económico y la reducción de la pobreza, los responsables de formular las políticas deben comprender cabalmente cómo la inversión pública se traduce en ...

In view of the market failures and the state failures inherent in providing agricultural extension, community-based approaches, which involve farmers‘ groups, have gained increasing importance in recent years as a third way to provide this ...

Agriculture has been the backbone of a Ghanaian economy that has recorded positive per capita GDP growth over the last 20 years. The agriculture sector has grown rapidly at an average annual rate of 5.5 percent in recent years, benefiting from ...

Public Expenditures, Growth, and Poverty assesses the efficacy of poverty reduction programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by synthesizing studies conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute over the past ten years. ...

“Using Tanzania as a test case, this study demonstrates how household survey data can be used to assess the impacts of public investments on growth and poverty. A two step procedure is used. First, household survey data are used to link ...

As policymakers decide how to allocate public spending to achieve higher growth and poverty reduction, they need accurate information to provide a clear understanding of how public investments translate into development outcomes. To help meet ...

Poverty in the Arab region garners little international attention because poverty rates there are far lower than in other regions like South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. However, high aggregate wealth hides significant pockets of hardship. The ...

Public spending may influence poverty alleviation objectives at several levels including overall spending plans of government (aggregate fiscal policy), policy decisions funded in the budget and the flow of budgeted resources to Ministries, ...

Ghana’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II; November, 2005) which spans the period 2006 – 2009 intends to shift the strategic focus of the country’s development agenda from the direct anti-poverty objectives of the GPRS I to a more ...

Poverty in Nigeria is pervasive although the country is rich in human and material resources that should translate into better living standards. According to the most recent survey (2004 National Living Standards Survey) presented by the National ...

Fiscal federalism has been argued to intensify regional competition and promote economic growth. This paper is the first, to our knowledge, to empirically assess the patterns and extent of strategic tax competition between geographically ...

Using district-level data on public expenditures from 2000 to 2006, and household-level production data from the 2005/06 Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper estimates the returns to different types of public investments across four ...

Most conflicts in the developing world take place in rural areas, displacing large numbers of civilians and disrupting their agricultural livelihoods. Rebuilding agriculture is an important strategy for post-conflict reconstruction. Agriculture ...

After 30 years of dynamic growth and substantial poverty reduction in Asia, do agriculture and rural development still have a role to play in that region? The policy briefs in this collection provide abundant evidence that they do. Although the ...

Many developing countries are currently in the process of designing regulatory systems that should allow them to use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for agricultural development, while also managing the food safety and environmental risks ...

The development pattern in Ghana is characterised by a north-south divide in which the north lags far behind the south. This paper sets out to identify avenues for pro-poor growth in Ghana, focussing on agricultural opportunities, particularly in ...

Renato (Jun) Folledo joined IFPRI in April 2009 as a Research Analyst. He is from Philippines who received his undergraduate and master’s degree in Forestry specializing in Biometry from the University of the Philippines in 1995 and 2000, ...

Over the past several decades, China has made tremendous progress in market integration and infrastructure development. Demand for natural resources has increased from the booming coastal economies, causing the terms of trade to favor the ...

It has been argued in the literature that China is underurbanized in large part because of restrictions on migration. While the presence of migration barriers can help explain why existing cities fail to achieve their optimal size, it cannot ...

Due to their highly democratic and locally autonomous nature, cooperatives have a potentially strong role in reducing poverty and social exclusion, and promoting rural and national development (Develtere et al. 2008; Birchall 2004, 2003). ...

Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in ...

Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in ...

This paper explores the dynamic relationship between the rural and urban sectors and the consequent impact on poverty in China and India, both of which followed aggressive urban industrialization paths in the mid-twentieth century. The bulk of ...

The dynamic rural nonfarm sector in China has been a major contributor to the country’s remarkable growth, while in India the growth in output and employment in this sector has been rather stagnant. The paper argues that the observed ...

In much of rural Africa, high transaction costs limit farmers’ market participation and thus their potential for income growth. Transaction costs can affect not only whether a farmer sells product but also whether sales occur at the farm gate on ...

Sam is a graduate of University of Ghana, Legon (BS, 1988), University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MS, 1993) and University of California, Davis (PhD, 1998), with specialty in econometrics, natural resource economics and development economics. Sam ...

Sayon Deb is a Senior Research Assistant in the Development Strategy and Governance Division. Sayon works for Margaret McMillan, studying land governance and policy in Western Africa as part of the Global Partnership in Land ...

Over the past four decades, decision-makers in Ethiopia have pursued a range of policies and investments to boost agricultural production and productivity, particularly with respect to the food staple crops that are critical to reducing poverty ...

Agriculture and rural development must play a central role in stimulating economic growth, reducing poverty, and improving food and nutrition security in Africa. The food price crisis of 2007-08 highlighted the dramatic implications of world ...

This paper uses household survey panel data of 416 rural households to study livestock asset dynamics in the north-east of Ethiopia. The period under examination (1996-2003) was marked by severe environmental shocks, including a series of ...

Natural disasters have particularly devastating impacts on economic growth in developing countries because they impede the accumulation of capital. The resilience of labor markets is crucial especially for the poor who rely only on labor to ...

In contrast to uniformly pessimistic assessments about Sub-Saharan Africa’s (hereafter Africa) ability to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this paper examines recent trends in poverty, malnutrition, and growth to delineate ...

This paper examines the impact of cooperatives on smallholder commercialization of cereals, using detailed household data from rural Ethiopia. We review the involvement of cooperatives, in terms of who participates and where they are located. We ...

This paper explores the idea of how wealth is distributed across social groups (ethnic or language groups, gender, etc.) and how such distribution fundamentally affects the evolution of economic inequality. By providing microfoundations suitable ...

“From a theoretical perspective crop yields should tend to converge over time and space as: growth in yield potential exhibits diminishing returns; an increasing share of farmers shift to using high yielding varieties (HYVs); barriers to ...

In this technical guide we describe the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKSS) concept developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute in response to the capacity gaps typically found in many African countries for ...

Meeting the food needs of the world’s growing population while reducing poverty and protecting the environment is a major global challenge. Private- and public-sector organizations must decide how to spend limited agricultural research funds in ...

“Agricultural development strategies delineate priorities for actions to enhance agricultural and overall development. They are usually put forward by individual countries based on assessments of national needs. Seldom are attempts made to ...

In spite of its oil wealth, poverty plagues Nigeria. The Federal Government of Nigeria has recognized that improved agricultural performance is critical to poverty reduction, since the majority of the nation’s poor depend on agriculture for ...

The Federal Government of Nigeria has demonstrated a strong commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the NEEDS Targets. Recognizing the importance of agriculture, as well as the challenges faced by the sector, in ...

The Ethiopian Strategy Support Program (ESSP-II) Conference on “Accelerating Agricultural Development, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia” was held at the Addis Ababa Hilton Hotel from October 22-24. This conference was organized ...

This paper develops a frontier shadow cost function approach to estimate empirically the effects of technological change, technical and allocative efficiency improvement in Chinese agriculture during the reform period (1980-93). The results ...

Tewodaj Mogues is a Research Fellow in IFPRI. She joined the DSG division in February 2005, and undertakes research on public investment for poverty reduction, local public finance and decentralisation, social capital and household assets, and ...

During the past decade and a half, Ethiopia’s approach to promoting development and improving the lives of the country’s rural population has been driven by a government strategy called Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization ...

This paper explores and compares the impact of different types of public spending on rural household welfare in Ethiopia. The analysis of public financial and household-level data reveals that returns to road investments are significantly higher ...

Ghana’s commitment to the tomato sector has its roots in the 1960s when three large tomato processing plants were established in the country. Though set up as part of President Nkrumah’s development plan for Ghana, the current rationale for these ...

Processing of highly perishable non-storable crops, such as tomato, is typically promoted for two reasons: as a way of absorbing excess supply, particularly during gluts that result from predominantly rainfed cultivation; and to enhance the value ...

Achieving food security is high on the agenda of the Malawi government. Notably, Malawi’s Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) recognizes that food security is a prerequisite for sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. However, a good ...

China and India are the most extraordinary economic success stories of the developing world. Both nations’ economies have grown dramatically over the past few decades, elevating them from two of the world’s poorest countries into ...

“In this paper we analyze the effect on output, employment and poverty of two (2) alternative versions of further trade liberalization — one representing free trade world wide (WTO) and the other a Western hemisphere free trade bloc ...

The Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP), the first major IFPRI country strategy support program managed by the Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD), was undertaken in close collaboration with the Ethiopian Development Research ...

We use two rounds of surveys, taken in 2000 and 2008 in the Zhili Township children’s garment cluster in Zhejiang Province, to examine in depth the evolution of this industrial cluster. Firm size has grown on average in terms of output and ...

In this paper we develop a dynamic CGE model to examine the impact of CAFTA on production, employment and poverty in Honduras. We model four aspects of the agreement: tariff reductions, quotas, changes in the rules of origin for maquila and more ...

We combined a hydro-crop model with a dynamic general equilibrium (DCGE) model to assess the impacts of climate variability and change on economic growth and poverty reduction in Zambia. The hydro-crop model is first used to estimate the impact ...

The International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI), headquartered in Washington, D.C.and represented by an office in Central America based in RUTA, in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the Sub-regional Economic Commission for Central America ...

Achieving food self-sufficiency on a national basis is a high priority for the government of Malawi. The goal of the Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) is to enhance food self-sufficiency by increasing smallholder farmers’ access to and use of ...

Agricultural policy reform is one of the major challenges facing India today. Such reform is required in order to reduce poverty through faster agricultural growth and to promote more sustainable use of natural resources while ensuring food ...

In Bangladesh—one of the poorest countries in Asia, where rice accounts for almost 70 percent of consumers’ caloric intake—the share of the less expensive, low-quality coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and the quality ...

“Zambia is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost three-quarters of the population were considered poor at the start of the 1990s, with a vast majority of these people concentrated in rural and remote areas. This extreme ...

This report provides a nuanced perspective on debates about the potential for Africa’s smallholder agriculture to stimulate growth and alleviate poverty in an increasingly integrated world. In particular, the paper synthesizes both the ...

This paper provides a nuanced perspective on debates about the potential for Africa’s smallholder agriculture to stimulate growth and alleviate poverty in an increasingly integrated world. In particular, the paper synthesizes both the ...

The recent surge in world commodity prices might alter the role of traditional export crops in African economies. While export crops have traditionally been important sources of foreign exchange earnings and government revenues, Ghana is an ...

Agriculture is the largest contributor to the economic well-being of most Nigerians. For the agriculture sector to continue to grow, research-based knowledge of the existing agricultural practices, the potential of the sector, the approach for ...

Although Ethiopia‘s economy has grown rapidly over the past decade and urbanization is increasing, the country‘s economic and spatial transformation has only just begun. Ethiopia‘s share of agriculture in GDP in 2006 (48 percent) was the highest ...

Over the past several years, the Ethiopian government has committed a substantial portion of the public budget to expanding public services and infrastructure in rural areas. This paper assesses who exactly is benefiting from this public ...

On 23 April 2010, farmers, traders, processors, agribusiness, Ghanaian and international academics, donors, and officials met in Accra for an exchange of views on how to revive the strategic but ailing tomato sector. The dialogue was organized by ...

Agriculture remains a major sector for the Nigerian economy. The majority of Nigerians rely on agriculture for their livelihood. It is increasingly evident that improved agricultural development and growth can offer a pathway from poverty, but ...

This paper is a description and an analysis of trade liberalization under CAFTA. It shows that in the short run the impact of the agreement is likely to be small. Since the U.S. already grants tariff-free access under the CBI, trade ...

Small-scale private irrigation schemes (SPRI) have been the major driving force behind the expansion of irrigated areas in Nigeria, despite government efforts to promote large scale public irrigation schemes. SPRI allows adjustment of irrigation ...

Ghana has long been regarded as one of the most successful countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It recently attained middle-income status and will likely achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half before the target ...

Nigeria’s rural-urban transformation has been atypical. From the 1960s onward, the emergence of the oil and gas sector set Nigeria down a very different path. Nigeria is one of the most urbanized countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Half its ...

Rural residents across the developing world earn a large share of their income—35–50 percent—from nonfarm activities. Agricultural households count on nonfarm earnings to diversify risk, moderate seasonal income swings, and finance agricultural ...

Agriculture is the economic mainstay of the majority of households in Nigeria (Udoh, 2000) and is a significant sector in Nigeria’s economy (Amaza, 2000). The important benefits of the agricultural sector to Nigeria’s economy include: the ...

There is a growing consensus that reducing childhood malnutrition is a critically important goal, but there is far less agreement on what strategies can best achieve the goal. Are more nutrition-specific interventions required, such as ...

Like many other developing countries, Nigeria faces serious poverty challenges and it is estimated that two-thirds of Nigerians now live below the poverty line of US$1 per day, most of them in rural areas. Recognizing this challenge, the Federal ...

Strong economic growth in urban areas has not led to rapid urbanization in Ethiopia, possibly as a result of prevailing land tenure policies. We examine the economic implications of accelerated urbanization using a rural–urban economywide model ...

In comparison to other African countries, Ethiopia has a low urbanization rate. According to the World Bank World Development Report (WDR) 2009, Sub-Sahara Africa is 30% urbanized, whereas Ethiopia is only 10.9% urbanized. Urbanization rates ...

Improving agricultural productivity is vital for poor rural households in Uganda to meet their food security needs and to promote sustained increases in income. Inorganic fertilizer can be a powerful productivity enhancing input. While Uganda has ...

Valerie Mueller is the co-leader of the Development Strategy and Governance Division's research under the Rural-Urban Linkages for Development Program. Prior to joining IFPRI, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Earth Institute at Columbia ...

The export sector of the Ugandan economy has recorded tremendous recent growth. Between 2000 and 2006, the value of exports climbed from US $401 million to US $962 million, with agricultural products accounting for 60 percent of this. The growth ...

Vida Alpuerto joined IFPRI as a Senior Research Assistant in DSGD. She conducts research on public investment for poverty reduction and spatial assessment of food security. More about Vida Alpuerto in IFPRI Library Google Scholar RePEc She ...

Wage or employment subsidies have been used in both developed and developing countries to raise employment levels. Various advisers to the South African government have endorsed wage subsidies as a policy measure to deal with this country’s ...

Estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the World Bank concerning the welfare impact of the 2007/08 global food crisis conclude that between 75 million and 160 million people ...

At the national level, dozens of African countries have pledged to implement the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU). This African-led ...

This study tests the null hypothesis that it is sufficient to interview only the household head to obtain accurate information on household income. The results show that using a husband’s estimate of his wife’s income does not produce ...

“We examine the spatial determinants of the prevalence of poverty for small spatially defined populations in rural Malawi. Poverty prevalence was estimated using a small-area poverty estimation technique. A theoretical approach based on the ...

The Agricultural Policy Support Facility (APSF) is an initiative to strengthen pro-poor, gender-sensitive, and environmentally sustainable evidence-based policymaking in Nigeria in the areas of rural and agricultural development. The program is ...

ثمة عدد قليل من المراقبين استشرف تلك التغيرات الجذرية التي شهدها العالم العربي خلال الأشهر القليلة الماضية. بدت الحكومات العربية وقد أحكمت قبضتها على شؤون بلدانها، كما اقترب نمو عدد كبير من الاقتصادات العربية من المتوسط العالمي أو تجاوزته خلال ...

Water resources are rapidly dwindling in Yemen, and Sana’a might be the first capital city in the world to go dry. Groundwater levels in many regions are falling rapidly and many households lack sufficient water for drinking, washing, and ...

إن التقرير الحالي يهدف إلى توجيه وتنشيط الجدل المثار حول أولويات السياسات الرئيسية للحد من الفقر وتحقيق الأمن الغذائي في ضوء الصحوة العربية. وتستند نتائجه إلى مزيج جديد من المجموعات البيانية والتحليل الاقتصادي الفعال. وترجح النتائج أن الفقر وعدم ...

至今，中国的改革开放已将近30个春秋，在此期间中国在经 济发展和扶贫减困中取得了巨大的成就。随着中国经济持续快速 的发展（2006年经济增长超过10%）,新的挑战浮出水面：地区收 入差距日益增大，弱势群体的出现，土壤退化, ...