What's New

The African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, or CAADP, has made steady progress over its past 10 years of implementation. However, the African continent continues to face some key challenges, including the need to provide for the food and nutrition needs of a steadily growing population, economic inequality and rural poverty, disputes over limited natural resources, and the impact of climate change and market globalization.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to plague the African continent, causing widespread human suffering and creating a stumbling block to economic development. In SSA, over a million people become newly infected with the disease every year ( UNAIDS, 2010 ). While access to proper medical care and education about safe sexual practices clearly play a role in preventing further spread of and deaths from the HIV virus, a new paper in The Economic Journal suggests that protecting people’s incomes could help decrease the spread of the disease as well.

The following post by IFPRI senior researcher Alejandro Nin Pratt was originally published on ASTI News and Notes .

Food security is a simple phrase that encompasses an incredibly complex concept.

Official Development Assistance, or ODA, provides a fundamental source of financing in the poorest and most fragile countries. Current ODA is estimated at $135 billion USD a year, but investment needs in infrastructure alone reach up to $1.5 trillion a year in emerging and developing countries according to the World Bank Group.