Author: Shishodia, Mahika
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Agribusiness has a major role to play in the transformation of the agricultural sector in Africa. With the demand for high-value food products increasing around the world, the production and export of these goods represents an opportunity to achieve increases in income and employment. To capture the benefits of this trend and capitalize on this opportunity for long-term agricultural growth, agribusiness in Africa must become more competitive. In addition to improving competitiveness, increasing agricultural productivity and food security are also major challenges in African agricultural development. In this paper, we compare the agribusiness competitiveness of African countries and develop typologies connected with their food security and agricultural productivity status. The typologies reveal various stylized facts on the competitiveness of agribusiness to help nations prioritize issues for agricultural development and growth. We develop the measures of agribusiness competitiveness and apply them to African countries. Additionally, we present policy implications and lessons for increasing the competitiveness of agribusiness in African countries.
Author: Van Asselt, Joanna
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
In recent decades, Ghana has experienced high economic growth and transformation, which contributed to the nation achieving the Millennium Development Goal targets on reducing extreme poverty and hunger. Against this background and in view of achieving the food and nutrition security targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, Ghana started a process of reviewing its food security and nutrition strategies and policies, including the overarching Zero Hunger Strategy. This discussion paper aims to contribute to this process by providing an update on the state of Ghana’s food and nutrition security. In addition to providing an overview of long-term historical trends at the national level, this analysis provides an overview of regional patterns of food and nutrition insecurity and recent changes across Ghana’s 10 administrative regions. Finally, the analysis identifies regional “hot spots” of food and nutrition insecurity. This paper confirms that Ghana has achieved substantial improvements in food and nutrition security overall, especially over the past decade. Nationwide, progress has been made in improving households’ economic access to food by reducing poverty and extreme poverty and in reducing chronic and acute child undernutrition. However, progress in reducing micronutrient malnutrition—particularly anemia and especially among young children—has been more modest. Across Ghana, large rural-urban gaps and regional differences—mainly between the north and the south—remain for most dimensions of food and nutrition security. In addition, Ghana is increasingly facing new nutrition-related public health problems that result from overnutrition and diets too rich in calories. Overweight and obesity among adults are rising rapidly in both urban and rural areas, leading to an increase in the risk of noncommunicable diseases. The rising double burden of malnutrition—that is, the coexistence of overnutrition and undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies—constitutes a challenge to public health and social protection policy. These new nutritional realities may make some existing food and nutrition security policies obsolete or even detrimental to nutrition security.
Author: Elnasikh, Sara
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
The Nile is the lifeblood of northeastern Africa, and its roles for and interdependency with the national economies it traverses and binds together grow as it moves from source to sea. With rapid economic development—population growth, irrigation development, rural electrification, and overall economic growth—pressures on the Nile’s water resources are growing to unprecedented levels. These drivers of change have already contributed to stark changes in the hydropolitical regime, and new forms of cooperation and cross-sectoral collaboration are needed, particularly in the Eastern Nile Basin countries of Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan. As direct sharing of water resources is hampered by unilateral developments, the need has increased for broader, cross-sectoral collaboration around the water, energy, and food sectors. This study is conducted to assess and understand the challenges of and opportunities for cooperation across the water-energy-food nexus nationally in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, as well as regionally across the Eastern Nile. To gather data, the paper uses an e-survey supplemented with key informant interviews geared toward national-level water, energy, and agriculture stakeholders, chiefly government staff and researchers. Findings from the survey tools suggest that most respondents strongly agree that collaboration across the water, energy, and agriculture sectors is essential to improve resource management in the region. At the same time, there is ample scope for improvement in collaboration across the water, energy, and food sectors nationally. Ministries of water, energy, and food were identified as the key nexus actors at national levels; these would also need to be engaged in regional cross-sectoral collaboration. Respondents also identified a wide range of desirable cross-sectoral actions and investments—both national and regional—chiefly, joint planning and operation of multipurpose infrastructure; investment in enhanced irrigation efficiency; joint rehabilitation of upstream catchments to reduce sedimentation and degradation; and investment in alternative renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar energy.
Author: Takeshima, Hiroyuki
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 54
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Book Description
This study was conducted to understand the evolution of agricultural mechanization in Nepal, specifically its determinants on both the demand and supply sides, as well as impacts on agricultural production and associations with broader economic transformation processes, in order to draw lessons that can be conveyed to other less mechanized countries. Mechanization levels in Nepal, a largely agricultural country, were relatively low until a few decades ago. However, significant mechanization growth, including the adoption of tractors, has occurred since the 1990s, against a backdrop of rising rural wages, particularly for plowing, combined with growing emigration and growth in key staple crop yields and overall broad agricultural production growth, as well as improved market access and participation. This growth in mechanization has taken place despite the general absence of direct government support or promotion. The growth of tractor use in the plains of the Terai zone has transformed agricultural production rather than inducing labor movement out of agriculture, raising overall returns to scale in intensification and enabling the cultivation of greater areas by medium smallholders than by resource-poor smallholders. Tractors have also facilitated the intensification of crop production per unit of land among very small farmers, enabling mechanization growth despite the continued decline in farm size, although these farmers may not have benefited as much as medium smallholders. Potential future research areas with policy relevance include mitigating accessibility constraints to tractor custom hiring services, identifying appropriate regulatory policies for mechanization, and providing complementary support to some smallholders who may not fully benefit from tractor adoption alone.
Author: Babu, Suresh Chandra
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
emphasizes the importance of identifying different pathways from agriculture to nutrition for better nutritional outcomes. Using a disaggregated dashboard approach with agriculture, food consumption, and demographic and health survey data, this study examines the progress of Indian states toward the Sustainable Development Goals. There is evidence of both disconnects and linkages among food security indicators along the agriculture-nutrition pathways. Through a broadened and comprehensive approach under one coordinating body with a good set of improved interventions and governance, Indian states can attain food and nutrition security by 2030. Such evidence based policy making is need of the hour to observe impact on the ground, rather than framing policies based on ideologies. At a time when the focus is more and more on impact, the shift
Author: Metivier, Jeanne
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 58
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Book Description
Since the inception of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, member countries have been heavily relying on the organization's dispute settlement procedure (DSP). Exploiting a new database on WTO litigations between 1995 and 2014, this paper describes disputes initiated over this period and identifies potential sources of bias concerning the participation of developing countries. The analysis builds on three different models to determine country i's probability of initiating a dispute against country j. Either it depends only on the two countries' structure of trade, that is the number of products exported by i to j (a situation we refer to as the rules-based model), or it is also affected by country i's or country j's specific characteristics (the unilateral power-based model), or it is also affected by bilateral economic and trade relations between countries i and j (the bilateral power-based model). We find that country i's structure of trade with j plays an important role in explaining the probability that i initiates a dispute against j under the DSP. Furthermore, country i's legal capacity and both countries' political regimes also affect this probability. However, we do not find that bilateral relationships between i and j, such as participants' capacity to retaliate against each others have an impact on dispute initiation.
Author: Attila Jambor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319448765
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
The book combines food security and agricultural competitiveness issues and treat them together. It starts with definitions and evolution of both concepts, followed by reviews on global and regional food security challenges. The book identifies global agricultural trade and competitiveness patterns and uses it as a basis for analysing global food security. Further, the book also identifies countries/regions/products groups and develops a typology of agricultural competitiveness, giving policy lessons and recommendations on how to increase national/regional/global agricultural competitiveness to achieve sustainable food security goals. The motivation behind writing such a book are numerous. First, as researchers interested in both food security and agricultural competitiveness issues, we have always found a gap in the scientific literature in treating the two notions together. Second, as lecturers of various agricultural policy and food security related courses, we have many times been faced with questions related to the competitive positions of different countries and the factors lying behind these positions. Third, as economic advisors, we have been faced with the need to provide clear policy recommendations and lessons on how increase competitiveness and associated food security many times. Such a need is mainly coming from developing country policy and decision makers.We think the book is unique in many ways. First, it provides a consistent analysis of global agricultural trade patterns over 25 years. Second, it analyzes and synthetizes the definitions, concepts and measurement methods of competitiveness, covering a major gap in the current literature. Third, it establishes a link between the analysis of global agricultural competitiveness and food security, which is also an understudied area. Finally, the book provides policy lessons to increase a country’s agricultural competitiveness and food security by identifying its determinants.
Author: Ifedapo Adeleye
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331967014X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
This book highlights the key issues, opportunities and challenges facing African firms, industries, cities and nations in their quest to compete successfully in the global economy. Exploring a topic which has grown in importance as Africa faces a period of subdued economic development, this edited collection takes a unique multi-disciplinary, multi-industry and multi-country approach. The authors provide insights into a broad range of issues, including competitiveness measurement and evaluation, sectoral competitiveness of declining and emerging industries, threats of the ‘Dutch Disease,’ and talent competitiveness. This timely book offers a response to the urgent need for the diversification of economies and the advancement of manufacturing in Africa, appealing to scholars of international business and economics.
Author: C. Martin Webber
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 082137964X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Value chain based approaches offer tremendous scope for market-based improvements in production, productivity, rural economy diversification, and household incomes, but are often covered by literature that is too conceptual or heavily focused on analysis. This has created a gap in the information available to planners, practitioners, and value chain participants. Furthermore, few references are available on how these approaches can be applied specifically to developing agriculture in Africa. 'Building Competitiveness in Africa s Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications' describes practical implementation approaches and illustrates them with scores of real African agribusiness case studies. Using these examples, the 'Guide' presents a range of concepts, analytical tools, and methodologies centered on the value chain that can be used to design, implement, and evaluate agricultural and agribusiness development initiatives. It stresses principles of market focus, collaboration, information sharing, and innovation. The 'Guide' begins by examining core concepts and issues related to value chains. A brief literature review then focuses on five topics of particular relevance to African agricultural value chains. These topics address challenges faced by value chain participants and practitioners that resonate through the many cases described in the book. The core of the book presents methodological tools and approaches that blend important value chain concepts with the topics and with sound business principles. The tools and case studies have been selected for their usefulness in supporting market-driven, private-sector initiatives to improve value chains. The 'Guide' offers 13 implementation approaches, presented within the implementation cycle of a value chain program, followed by descriptions of actual cases. Roughly 60 percent of the examples are from Africa, while the rest come from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The 'Guide' offers useful guidance to businesspeople, policy makers, representatives of farmer or trade organizations, and others who are engaged in agro-enterprise and agribusiness development. These readers will learn how to use value chain approaches in ways that can contribute to sound operational decisions, improved market linkage, and better results for enterprise and industry development.
Author: United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Publisher: UN
ISBN: 9789211064469
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In recent years, a renewed focus on agriculture has been evident in policy and development agendas for the African continent, yet little knowledge has been generated on the interlinkages of production, agroindustry and markets, as well as the potentials and challenges for developing these. This publication analyzes the challenges, the potential and opportunities of African agribusiness in the current period of dramatic changes in global agro-industrial markets, and builds a case for agribusiness development as a path to Africa's prosperity. Written by international experts, from agribusiness practitioners, to academic experts and UN technical agencies, this volume fills what the United Nations Industrial Development Organization perceived as a significant gap in knowledge concerning these issues.
