To amplify the development impact of the African Agriculture Fund, the International Fund for Agricultural Development actively promoted a Technical Assistance Facility to work alongside its investments. Blending development finance with technical assistance can be a powerful tool to achieve business growth and development outcomes. After five years of implementation,...

This edition provides an account on the activities and results of the FAO Sierra Leone Representation from January to March 2017. Food insecurity and poverty, a major challenge to meet-ing SDGs target 2.1 in sub-Saharan Africa.

This Edition of RAF Newsletter captures the key projects and success stories of FAO across the subregion of Africa. It also present to readers news highlights and titbits of FAO activities in focus.

Since February 2014 Sierra Leone, with support from the Government of Germany and FAO is implementing the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT). This video interviews a wide range of engaged national stakeholders from the land, fisheries and forestry sectors and documents best practices and lessons learned....

Using the outcomes of a technical consultation meeting organized by FAO in December 2014 in Dakar, Senegal, with the support of CIRAD, and building on past studies conducted by FAO and other partners, the report presents an analysis of the impact of the EVD outbreak on agricultural market chains. Seven...

Added value to improve Agriculture and Farmers’ living standards. A journey through the activities of the Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture Project (FSCA) in the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Small-scale, resource-poor farmers organize fair trade grower cooperatives to market certified organic cocoa exports from post-war Sierra Leone.

Forest planning and policy making process in West Africa – and elsewhere in Africa for that matter – has largely been dominated by the State, with very little room for a meaningful participation of civil society. This state of affairs led to a management of forests and forest resources which...

West African Agriculture is at a turning point. The combination of strong demand growth, sustained economic growth, higher global agricultural prices, and an improved policy environment has generated the most conducive conditions for Agricultural growth in over 30 years. West African countries and their Development Partners now clearly recognize the...

Ten years after the Economic Community of West African States launched its policy on food and agriculture, coordination remains a serious challenge. Several regional initiatives compete with each other at the political and the project levels, in a complex and fragmented institutional context. This paper is one of a series published...

Thirty women groups attached to the Koinadugu Women Vegetable Farmers’ Cooperative benefited from high quality vegetable seeds of different varieties with support from FAO to enhance their production and depleted income.

6 September 2015, Bo District (Sierra Leone) - Over one thousand people that have been displaced by flooding in six villages of Bo District, South of Sierra Leone, are in urgent need of food, clothes, medicines and shelter to cope with the traumatized situation that has befell them. The flood...

Added value to improve Agriculture and Farmers’ living standards. A journey through the activities of the Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture Project (FSCA) in the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali Senegal and Sierra Leone

Pastor John Kamara, Musaia, Koinadugu Province, Sierra Leone.Through the narrative of his life, Pastor Kamara tells the story of the development and improvement of honey business in Sierra Leone. From the struggle to make a living collecting honey in the traditional way to the success of producing raw honey with...

Agricultural Business Centres (ABCs) provide a range of technical, operational and marketing services to smallholders and are the main entry point for MAFFS extension support. ABC commodity focus depends on the predominant cropping system and economic activity of the membership with early emphasis on rice and other food crops but...

Under the Smallholder Commercialization Programme, FAO supported the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program to implement Agicultural Business Centres (ABC) in order to improve food security for the most vulnerable population. This program has involved the Government of Sierra Leone under the National Sustainable Agriculture Development Plan. It has permitted...

This book aims to contribute to filling an existing gap in the literature on food value chains in West Africa. It identifies good practices in value chain development and provides policy guidance to agricultural and rural development stakeholders. It is intended to be a sourcebook for decision makers, especially at...

En appui au bureau d’études Bourbon Madagascar, le Gret a participé à l’évaluation de la convention programme de l’ONG Inter Aide dans quatre pays (Madagascar, Ethiopie, Malawi et Sierra Leone) sur le renforcement de l’autonomie et des capacités productives des agricultures familiales en zones rurales isolées d’Afrique Subsaharienne. Le Gret...

As part of the activities being implemented through the Italian contribution to the FAO Trust Fund for Food Security and Food Safety, several projects in different countries and regions are following a common strategy. In West Africa this Programme, “Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture” (FSCA), or «Programme Italien pour...

This report presents a farm household model for use in the context of developing countries to gain knowledge on food security and rural poverty alleviation under different economic conditions and agri-food policy options. This model, called FSSIM-Dev (Farming System Simulator for Developing Countries), is an extension of the FSSIM model...