Africa

This paper aims to explain finance innovations in a detailed way and generate insights on whether the services work as stated, create value for underserved customers, and ease age-old pain points in delivering financial services to underserved customers. Fintechs are innovating at every step of the financial services value chain, often through new value propositions. They are making financial services more affordable and accessible, are improving customere experience and accelerate use and engagement. »

This case study looks at the potential value of horticulture for farmers in Tanzania, and the contribution of the seed sector to the growing Tanzanian horticulture sector. Small farmers could all use commercial open pollinated varieties (OPV) and adopt low-cost production technologies. A profitable, responsible sector meeting the national needs is possible and reliable seed companies are critical to the vitality of the sector. »

This guide book describes the most important weather and agroclimatic products that are available by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) and identifies the most important needs of farmers concerning climate information. Special consideration will be given to the local knowledge used by rural farmers. n additional objective is to improve communication among the NMS staff, in particular, meteorologists and agrometeorologists and to encourage Agro-Pastoral Field School (APFS) trainers and facilitators to be more aware of their respective availability. »

This paper takes a discourse analytical perspective on gender policy and budgeting and examines what happens to gender issues in agriculture and climate change adapation when they are mainstramed and domesticated in different governance levels. The study finds that while the international norm of gender mainstreaming has been formally adopted in Uganda, its transformational potential was reduced through five distinct processes during norm translation. »

This paper examines the state, drivers and, consequently, the impacts of agricutural mechanization in eleven countries in Africa. Significant drivers of agricultural mechanization include the size of the household and gender of the household head. Agricultural mechanization, significantly increases the amount of cropland cultivated (extensification) and is also accompanied by input intensification especially in countries where land expansion is limited. The findings point to the importance of developing favorable arrangements that would avail mechanization to small and medium scale farmers. »

This policy paper summarises a set of key policy programme recommendations based on evidence and learning of the Sustainable Nutrition for All (SN4A) programme. For governments it is recomended to ensure that the multi-sectoral platforms of the programme are replicated and aligned from national to subnational level to ensure community research. Practitioners are recommended to support scalability of community driven social behaviour change communication nutrition strategies in different contexts as part of nutrition porgramming. »