MOTIVATION After years of declining investment in rural development and low agricultural productivity, the African Union Commission launched the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2003. Participating African governments committed to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture in order to help achieve a 6 percent annual agricultural growth rate. With USAID >> Read more
Building Ghana’s Capacity to Overcome Poverty
MOTIVATION Recognizing that agriculture is critical to Ghana’s vision of becoming a middle-income country by 2015, IFPRI, in partnership with the Ghanaian government and several development partners, launched the Ghana Strategy Support Program in 2005. The program, funded by USAID, supports the country-driven design of agriculture and rural development strategies by strengthening the skills of >> Read more
Aflatoxins in Groundnuts in Mali
MOTIVATION Aflatoxins are naturally occurring carcinogenic substances found in high quantities in some of Africa’s crops. They spread rapidly in warm tropical climates, inflicting harm on humans and animals. In 2008, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the AflaControl project analyzed groundnuts in Mali: these groundnuts were the focus of major livelihood >> Read more
Agriculture Extension Systems in China
Despite more than 1 million extension workers in the 1990s and early 2000s, millions of Chinese farmers were left without access to services.
The Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators Initiative
Informing Policymakers for Better Allocation of Research & Development Resources
Regional Strategic Alternatives for Agriculture-Led Growth and Poverty Reduction in West Africa
In 2006, IFPRI began collaborating with the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD) and ECOWAS to identify the most effective ways to promote growth in agricultural productivity at the subsector level across West and Central African countries.
Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development
Learning from successes in agricultural development is now more urgent than ever.
Food Security and Climate Change: Using IFPRI Results as a Call to Action
Motivation The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen two food price crises that adversely affected poor people across the globe. During the next 40 years, as the world population approaches 9 billion and incomes in many developing countries continue to rise, agricultural production will struggle to meet increasing food demand. Climate change will >> Read more
Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods, and Food Security
Motivation Nutrition and access to nutritious foods are vital in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Undernutrition heightens vulnerability to disease transmission, and pairing antiretroviral drug therapies with adequate nutrition increases their effectiveness. Income inequality and food insecurity have also been found to increase the likelihood of exposure to HIV, driving up rates of infection >> Read more
The South Asia Initiative: Developing Pro-Poor Policies
Motivation In the early 2000s, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and USAID supported IFPRI’s implementation of the South Asia Initiative, aimed at addressing the region’s persistent problems of poverty and hunger using policy research, capacity strengthening, and policy dialogues. As one part of the initiative, IFPRI created the Policy Analysis and Advisory Network for South >> Read more
