This paper first looks “downstream” at two processes—urbanization and dietary changes—that create the demand (“pull”) for the changes in the whole food system. It then provides some illustrations of the transformation, mainly at the “midstream,” post-farmgate segments of the supply chains that are transforming—wholesale, processing, and logistics. It concludes with...

This article investigates gender inequality in agricultural productivity, highlights its key determinants, and approximates the potential production, consumption, and poverty gains from reducing or closing the gender productivity gap. The analysis is performed on the basis of representative household survey datasets recently collected in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. In these...

This special issue of Nature & Faune journal, with its exciting variety of papers dealing with issues related to sustainable soil management in Africa is an important contribution towards promoting sustainability on the continent.

Nigeria liberalized input distribution and established the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) in 2011 to deliver subsidized inputs to farmers as part of its Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA). Despite the relevance of the GESS as a subsidy delivery mechanism, its achievements during the first year of implementation (2012) were below...

This document was prepared collaboratively within the FAORAF West Africa Team with a focus on the forestry sector. It is the product of a series of sub-regional consultations with forest-related civil society organizations in a selected number of countries in West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal).

Women play a critical role in every link of the value chain in small-scale fisheries, although their best-known roles are in processing and marketing of fish and other fishery products. This perception of the highly gender-segregated division of labour (men fishing / women processing) has shaped the generalized approach in...

During the past ten years, over 600 Chinese experts and technicians have been deployed in Nigeria to share their agricultural skills with local farmers. The South-South Cooperation (SSC) programme, which has been fully funded by the Government of Nigeria and facilitated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United...

The existence of markets is critical to the survival of the farm-household-family system and as such the nature of this relationship and how it affects the dietary supply of the household needs to be understood. The objective of this study is to examine the market relation of farm families by...

Agriculture plays a significant role in Africa, accounting for about 30 per cent of GDP south of the Sahara, as well as a significant proportion of export value. Not surprisingly, in most African countries, 60 per cent or more of employees work in agriculture. Yet this barely scrapes the surface...

The credit market serving agriculture in Nigeria is encumbered by operational and administrative inadequacies and the discriminatory tendencies of financial institutions. The government has implemented policies to redress the situation, but small-scale farmers have not benefitted from these incentives to any reasonable degree. This makes it imperative to examine the...

 Smallholder farmers in rural Nigeria face farm labour shortages and the need to find ways of dealing with this problem is therefore apt for food security and socioeconomic improvement. In an attempt to deal with this problem, Nigerians rural farmers constitute themselves into farmers’ labour groups in other to meet...

The weaknesses in the financial and technical capacity of Nigeria’s agrodealers came to light when many of them could not provide the financial backing for their role in distributing inputs under the growth enhancement support scheme. They are also not adequately equipped, organized, or buoyant enough to be able to...

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following...

Agriculture plays a significant role in Africa, accounting for about 30 per cent of GDP south of the Sahara, as well as a significant proportion of export value. Not surprisingly, in most African countries, 60 per cent or more of employees work in agriculture. Yet this barely scrapes the surface...

Land is a main life support resource to third world countries. In Nigeria, a major limitation to sustainable land use resources planning, development and management is the unreliable assessment of t available stock and the level of utilization. In particular, the commonly adopted traditional techniques for the evaluation are as...

Organic farming represents a deliberate attempt to make the best use of local natural resources and is an environmental friendly system of farming. It relies much on ecosystem management which excludes external input, especially the synthetic ones. Ander son, Jolly and Green (2005) stated that organic farming is a production...

African governments, international agencies and NGOs are calling for policies which pay more attention to young people and agriculture.  This policy brief draws on research findings by Future Agricultures and asks: What are the expectations and aspirations of young rural men and women? What are the constraints and opportunities facing...

The Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) is the approach suggested by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) through the sub Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA CP) to address the acknowledged shortcoming of African Agricultural Research and Development’s (ARD) failure to achieve impact on the farmer’s field. The...

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...

Satisfaction of household requirements and profit maximization has been the main goals of subsistence small-holder farmers in the rural communities of Nigeria. This necessitated the practice of multiple/mixed cropping of arable crops. On the contrary, a part of the National food security agenda of the Federal government is the raising...