Southern Africa

The synthesis report reflects on the seed industry’s progress and the remaining challenges over this reporting period, against a changing global backdrop. The 2019 index demonstrates that seed companies continue to invest in providing access to seeds for smallholder farmers in index regions, through differing business models and approaches, providing increased evidence of their practices. »

This Access to Seeds Index evaluates the performance of the seed industry in taking the lead in reaching smallholder farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa. The index reveals that companies are present in all index countries and investing in local seed sector development, but need more step up efforts to reach more smallholders. East African Seed tops the 2019 Access to Seeds Index for Eastern and Southern Africa. »

This book shares new data relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa to answer key questions on the following five topic areas: (1) Climate impacts; (2) Climate-smart varieties; (3) Farm management; (4) Value chains; and (5) Scaling up. The papers illustrate, among other things, how practitioners can access free online tools,how new varieties of crops or better soil management can help farmers adapt; how information networks or entrepreneurial training can help the spread of promising technologies; how private-sector firms can promote CSA; and how farmer-to-farmer training can help bring CSA to scale. »

This magazine provides advices and examples of best practices as well as failures to bridge the gap between rural and urban regions. The United Nations New Urban Agenda implies changing diets and thus the need to include sustainable food systems for the cities. So the rural areas have to transform in parallel. »

This article discusses the growth of the private seed sector since the seed industry in Eastern and Souther Africa (ESA) was deregulated, the importance of public-private partnerships in driving genetic gains for climate-smart (CS) traits, and the importance of developing a favourable regional regulatory environment that incentivises the private sector to rapidly scale out CS crop varieties »

This policy brief explores gender dynamics in emerging markets for agricultural machinery service provision in Bangladesh. Women benefit form managing and sometimes owning machinery services, as well as from the direct and indirect consequences of hiring such services to harvest their crops. However, a number of technical, economic and cultural barriers constrain women’s full participation in these benefits. »