Knowledge Portal

The article in the Global Food Security Journal reviews evidence on African urbanization trends and consequences of these for the smallholder sector and rural food security. The author highlights that urban growth is less rapid than often assumed and consumption rather than production driven, while liberalized trade regimes have globalized food systems. »

This paper (PDF) by professor John Ouma-Mugabe at the CTA website, lays out the conceptual framework for developing indicators for assessing the governance of science, technology and innovation (STI) in Africa. It is erected on the premise that the subject of ‘governance of science, technology and innovation’ is increasingly becoming part of academic inquiry and public policy discourse in Africa and internationally, yet there are no conceptual tools as well as empirically tested indicators for demonstrating what constitutes it. »

This paper in the Ecosystem Health and Sustainability Journal, presents a new method to systematically link issues and indicators under two conceptual frameworks of sustainability in order to enable quantitative analyses. The authors demonstrate this approach with a specific use case focused on the global sourcing of agricultural products. »

This publication (PDF) by the World Bank views ICTs as potentially transformative technology for rural development. The paper examines how ICT-based interventions might be designed to strengthen women’s participation in commodity value chains under the two projects. »

This report by USAID and ACDI/VOCA (PDF) presents an assessment of agri-business small and medium enterprises (ASMEs) in Malawi. It was found that this is a sector with diversified business ownership, in which owners commonly operate multiple businesses and can be classed as ‘portfolio’ owner-managers spanning both agri-business and non-agri-businesses. A portfolio enables them to »

This paper by Aidenvironment, NewForesight and IIED presents a sustainable sector transformation model for smallholder dominated agricultural commodity sectors which takes a holistic approach to transformation. It begins with an explanation of some of the dynamics of sector transformation. It then presents the limits of purely public or market-driven models, before finally presenting the five building blocks that make up the model. »