Sub-Saharan Africa

This article in the Global Food Security journal discusses the effectiveness of agronomic biofortification – the application of mineral micronutrient fertilizers to soils or plant leaves to increase micronutrient contents in edible parts of crops – and it’s potential to fight hidden hunger. There is evidence that agronomic biofortification can increase yields and the nutritional quality of staple crops, but there is a lack of direct evidence that this leads to improved human health. »

This report by FAO presents a gender assessment of the dairy value chain in selected sites in Ethiopia: North Shoa Shewa (Degem woreda), East Gojam (Dejen woreda) and Gamu Gofa Arba Minch (Arba Minch Zuria woreda). The findings confirm that women’s empowerment is vital for sustainable dairy value chain development and that projects supporting dairy production need to increase their efforts to be gender inclusive. »

This paper reviews evidence of the role of small towns in the ‘virtuous circle’ of rural-urban linkages, and distils the key lessons for equitable food security policy that is spatially and context specific. Drawing on lessons from a set of case studies from Tanzania and other examples, this paper aims to contribute to this debate by uniting a food systems approach with an explicit focus on small towns and large villages that play a key role in food systems. »

This paper by IFPRI assesses the nature of land administration service delivery in Nigeria using data collected from three sets of participants in land administration processes. The particpants include: 76 service providers, 253 beneficiaries, and 172 professionals. Land registration information guidelines seem to be rarely available to the public. »

This issue of Farming Matters by ILEIA explores the different ways pastoral societies are joining forces to challenge the policies that undermine their culture and way of life. For millennia, pastoralist societies have managed the rangelands of the world’s most challenging environments, producing food and providing ecosystem services for millions of households. The experiences, opinions and perspectives presented in this issue highlight the importance of pastoral societies for agroecology and the transformation of entire food systems. »

This article, published in the Global Food Security journal, examines the impacts of the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP’s) Purchase for Progress (P4P) program on smallholder farmers in Tanzania. P4P is a multi-year, multi-country pilot that sought to improve smallholder farmer wellbeing through a combination of food purchases from farmer organizations and supply-side interventions. »