What's New

Fertilizers, particularly inorganic (chemical) fertilizers, have the ability to substantially increase farmers’ agricultural productivity.  However, in Nigeria, fertilizer use remains low; according to a new AGRODEP working paper , inorganic fertilizer use in Nigeria is 11.3kg/ha and organic fertilizer use is only 0.2kg/ha. This puts Nigeria well below the targeted 50 kg/ha set forth in the Abuja Declaration. To address this low fertilizer use, the Nigerian Federal Government established a subsidy to help farmers access inorganic fertilizers.

Better linking Africa’s rural smallholder population to national, regional, and international agricultural value chains is a key rural development and poverty reduction priority. Which types of interventions will be successful in improving such linkages is highly context-specific, however, depending on the country, the target population, and the specific product being marketed. In a new book , IFPRI researchers examine how to best evaluate and implement context-specific value chain development (VCD) interventions, with several case studies conducted in Africa south of the Sahara.

It is a commonly held belief that post-harvest losses along staple food value chains in developing countries tend to be high. However, a new research note from the Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) suggests that in the case of Ethiopian teff, this may not be true.

For the second year in a row, Malawi is facing a national maize deficit. In the 2016-2017 marketing year, the maize supply gap is expected to be 953,000 MT, according to a new Food Security Outlook from FEWS Net.

As many as four million people in northeast Nigeria currently need emergency food aid due to ongoing conflict and significant depreciation of the Naira, according to FEWS Net’s latest coverage on the region. Large segments of the population in the northeastern part of the country are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) acute food insecurity, with limited data suggesting some populations could even be facing possible Famine (IPC Phase 5) food insecurity.