agricultural transformation

This report by AGRA is the fourth volume of the Africa Agriculture Status Report series focusing on, “Progress towards African Agricultural Transformation”. The series has the objective of producing an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of emerging issues and challenges being faced by Africa’s smallholder farmers. The 2016 Report has tracked the progress made in the last decade with the MDGs and the Maputo Declaration as critical benchmarks, through to the current status, considering the Malabo Declaration and the projection and trajectory towards 2030 in line with the SDGs. »

In preparation for a side-event on the African Development Bank (ADB) annual meetings, the INCLUDE Platform launched a series of one pagers on Africa’s agricultural transformation and how it can be made inclusive for women and youth. This one pager introduces the concepts of agricultural transformation and agribusiness and identifies the key challenges in making both inclusive. The series of one pagers assess how an inclusiveness lens can best be applied. It does so in the form of four briefs on the most pressing issues of inclusive agribusiness. »

Using concepts of multifunctionality and agrarian change, this paper examines the implications of introducing an international environmental certification programme to a site where the ‘peasantry’ has been preserved and has limited integration in the global agro-food system. Drawing on a case study that examines the first certified organic shrimp production project in Vietnam, this paper concludes that the current movement towards post-productivism in the global North has potential to keep local farming practices in the global South by justifying the value of peasant-like production methods through international certification. »

This working paper by IFPRI aims to critically analyze the youth unemployment situation in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole and in Nigeria in particular and to delve deeper into the potential that agriculture has for job creation for youth. In Section 2 the authors provide an overview of the youth unemployment situation globally and in Africa, followed in Section 3 by a review of the literature on the role agriculture plays in job creation. In Section 4, the dynamics of unemployment and job creation in Nigeria are reviewed. In Section 5 recent initiatives in Nigeria on this front are discussed. »

This policy note shows to what extend mechanization efforts from Bangladesh can be used as an example for these transformations in Ghana and Nigeria. The notes elaborates on the experiences of a p Past efforts in these countries have mostly focused on the styles of machinery used in western countries or Latin American countries, where average farm sizes are much larger. In Bangladesh recent fast growth in agricultural mechanization has spread among smallholder farmers that own an average of 0.5 hectares. »

Agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations are institutional innovations which have the potential to reduce poverty and improve food security. This book presents a raft of international case studies, from developing and transition countries, to analyse the internal and external challenges that these complex organizations face and the solutions that they have developed. »