Ghana

This report argues that fisheries and aquaculture are essential for food and nutrition security, employment, income generation and improved livelihoods in the Volta Basin, West Africa. This basin provides a significant number of fisheries and fisheries-related jobs, but operations face significant challenges including multifaceted issues, with inefficiencies at the upstream and downstream levels. »

This paper, published in the Regional Environmental Change journal, analyzes drivers of change in farming practices in the region using data obtained from surveys of 700 farming households in five countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Senegal). Agricultural practices have constantly changed in West Africa, and understanding the factors that have driven the changes may help guide strategies to promote sustainable agriculture in the region. »

This paper in the World Development Journal, argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households. It explains the importance of social norms, perceptions, and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels: (1) the household/family, (2) the community, (3) the state, and (4) the market. The framework is applied to Ghana, using the results from qualitative field work. »

In this issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine the central theme is community involvement in urban food planning. Urban agriculture and food systems are gaining the attention of planners and policy makers across the global south and north. While this emerging planning and policy attention is laudable, it must build on decades of community-led efforts to rebuild urban agriculture and community food systems. Failure to build on these on-the ground practices run the risk of developing policy that is uninformed and disconnected from the lived experiences of people in communities. »

This learning series discusses the Procurement Governance for Home Grown School Feeding (PG-HGSF) project, which develops a more inclusive and responsive relationship between smallholder farmers and school feeding buyers in Ghana, Kenya, and Mali.  »

This book by UNU-WIDER comprehensively evaluates trends in living conditions in 16 major sub-Saharan African countries, corresponding to nearly 75% of the total population. An important message from ten of the countries they looked at is that there are potentially high returns to policies that take agriculture seriously. Countries that place a particular emphasis on upgrading the capabilities of small-scale farmers are more likely to achieve broad-based development objectives. »