Economic Growth and Development

It is widely agreed that reducing poverty in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) depends largely on stimulating growth in agriculture. To this end, heads of state in Africa rallied to form the pan-African Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) with the goal of raising investments and improving strategy implementation. However, while implementing an agricultural agenda under the CAADP framework, more and more countries have realized that increasing public investment in agriculture alone is not enough.

There is growing interest in the role of policy reforms to promote gender equality and empower women, two key objectives of development policy. From a policy perspective, it would be ideal for reforms undertaken in different policy areas to be consistent, so that they reinforce each other in improving gender equity.

The World Development Report 2013: Jobs stresses the role of strong private sector led growth in creating jobs and outlines how jobs that do the most for development can spur a virtuous cycle. The report finds that poverty falls as people work their way out of hardship and as jobs empower women to invest more in their children. Efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do, as more productive jobs appear, and as less productive ones disappear. Societies flourish as jobs foster diversity and provide alternatives to conflict.

This paper examines how tertiary-level agricultural education in sub-Saharan Africa can contribute to agricultural development beyond its current role as a source of technical training. The paper draws on data and information gathered from semistructured key informant interviews conducted in late 2006 in and around Addis Ababa, Ambo, Haramaya, Harar, Holetta, and Combolcha, as well as information and analysis from secondary sources.

In light of a reinvigorated policy orientation toward agriculture in developing countries following recent dramatic developments affecting food prices and agricultural land use, public resource allocation decisionmakers ought to have access to the existing evidence from academic research on the impact of public investments related to and in support of agriculture.

The recent expansion of Chinese economic engagement in Africa is often poorly documented and not well understood. This paper is the second in an IFPRI-sponsored effort to better understand Chinese engagement in Africa’s agricultural sector. A clearer picture of Chinese activities in agriculture is important as a foundation for Africans and their development partners to more fruitfully engage with an increasingly important actor. Chinese engagement in agriculture and rural development in Tanzania is long-standing.

There is a general consensus that food for education (FFE) programs increase primary school participation. Although this view is widely held, there is limited causal evidence to support it. Moreover, little is known about how the design of FFE programs affects schooling outcomes. This article presents evidence of the impacts of alternative methods of FFE delivery on schooling in Northern Uganda using a randomized controlled evaluation conducted from 2005 to 2007.