What's New

Over the past decade, both the scale of and the access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) - including mobile phones, audio-visual communication, digital technologies, and internet services - have grown considerably in Africa south of the Sahara. The potential benefits of ICTs for the region’s agricultural sector, and its poor farming households, are especially important, as Africa south of the Sahara has the lowest rates of agricultural productivity and the highest rates of undernutrition in the world.

Subsidies to promote fertilizer use have become a popular policy in Africa south of the Sahara, aimed at increasing the region’s lagging agricultural production. However, new research from Ghana , published in Food Security , suggest that fertilizer subsidies alone may not be enough to encourage greater fertilizer application and increase farm productivity.

Latest GIEWS External Food Assistance Report

According to the March 2017 edition of the GIEWS report on external food assistance needs , 28 countries in Africa are in need of food aid. The underlying factors driving the need for assistance vary and include lack of food availability, widespread lack of food access, and severe localized problems impacting food security. The GIEWS report is updated four times per year.

Maize plays a vital role in food security in Africa south of the Sahara, providing an estimated 40-50 percent of the calories consumed by poor populations. [1] However, the crop is also very susceptible to climate-driven shocks, particularly variable rainfall and drought. While drought-tolerant maize varieties have become more widely available in recent years, the adoption of these new varieties depends on farmers’ perceptions of the crop’s benefits – and their willingness to pay for those benefits.

Efforts to increase rural incomes and reduce rural poverty in developing countries often focus on policies to lower transport costs and increase market access among poor and remote rural populations. Despite the growing importance of such policies, however, it is not entirely clear to what extent and through which channels increased market access impacts rural individuals’ and households’ nutrition outcomes and overall wellbeing. A recent paper published in World Development seeks to answer these questions in the context of rural Ethiopia.