Monitoring and analysing food and agriculture policies and their effects is crucial to support decision makers in developing countries to shape better policies that drive agricultural and food systems transformation. This report is a technical analysis of government spending data on food and agriculture during 2004–2018 in 13 sub-Saharan African countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. It analyses the level of public expenditure, including budget execution, source of funding and decentralized spending, as well as the composition of expenditure, including on producer or consumer support, research and development, infrastructure and more to reveal the trends and challenges that countries are facing. It also delves into the relationship between the composition of public expenditure and agricultural performance.As a way forward for future policymaking, the report offers a set of recommendations to strengthen policy monitoring systems and data generation for effective public investments in food and agriculture.The report is produced by the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme at FAO in collaboration with MAFAP country partners.

Wasteful over-consumption (by some) in the developed countries and the continuing, in some cases worsening, hunger of millions in the Third World is a dramatic indication that food problems are urgent. Anger is not enough and this book, which comes from the research group on Development Policy and Practice in the Open University (DPP), aims to provide some of the analytical tools needed for serious action. Case studies to show ways in which food aid has been used by donor countries for political ends; descriptions of the relationships between markets and human needs; articles on the problems associated with the feminization of poverty; pieces on patterns and trends of food production; analysis of land reform; an evaluation of the effects of biotechnology are all part of this rich and lively collection of articles written specially for this book.

The agricultural and rural crisis besetting Africa is the result of both policy failures and inadequacies and the product of structural rigidities inhibiting access to and control of vital resources. The challenge of leadership in the agricultural sector is how to design and implement policies which would help induce growth and development in this sector. It is against this background that the Africa Leadership Forum convened in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria in July of 1989 to explore a broad range of parameters to be addressed in the formulation of successful policies. This volume is derived from papers submitted and presentations made. The book provides the main conclusions and recommendations which emanated from the conference. They highlight a series of actions which must be taken in such areas as women in agriculture, small-scale farmers, agribusiness, subsidies, human capital, and linkages between international and national research anbd energy. Other topics include - Africa's security situation; social and economic factors, ecology, and social engineering; dietary patterns in Africa; pest management; agricultural practice; and international organizations. It is aimed at economists, anthropologists, ecologists, agriculturalists, social and political scientists, and all those interested or involved in agricultural production in Africa and other underdeveloped countries.

Rapid population growth, poorly planned urbanization, and evolving agricultural production and distribution practices are changing foodways in African cities and creating challenges: Africans are increasingly facing hunger, undernutrition, and malnutrition. Yet change also creates new opportunities. The food economy currently is the main source of jobs on the continent, promising more employment in the near future in farming, food processing, and food product distribution. These opportunities are undermined, however, by inefficient links among farmers, intermediaries, and consumers, leading to the loss of one-third of all food produced. This volume is an in-depth analysis of food system shortcomings in three West African cities: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Rabat, Morocco; and Niamey, Niger. Using the lens of geographical economics and sociology, the authors draw on quantitative and qualitative field surveys and case studies to offer insightful analyses of political institutions. They show the importance of “hard†? physical infrastructure, such as transport, storage, and wholesale and retail market facilities. They also describe the “soft†? infrastructure of institutions that facilitate trade, such as interpersonal trust, market information systems, and business climates. The authors find that the vague mandates and limited capacities of national trade and agriculture ministries, regional and urban authorities, neighborhood councils, and market cooperatives often hamper policy interventions. This volume comes to a simple conclusion: international development policy makers and their financial and technical partners have neglected urban markets for far too long, and now is the time to rethink and reinvest in this complex yet crucial subject.

This paper uses newly compiled data and a wide range of empirical analysis to assess the impact of government policies on agricultural exports and food production over the past two decades and across most sub-Saharan countries. While direct government control of marketing and prices of export crops has discouraged exports, disincentives created indirectly by overvalued currencies have been more damaging to agricultural supply in sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions. The rise of imported food to Africa has resulted mostly from factors that encourage consumers to eat imported food, and not from a failure of domestic production, as often assumed. These factors include overvalued currencies (which reduce the price of imported food), falling world food prices, high incomes during times of improved terms of trade, and increased urbanization (encouraged in part by policies of keeping farm prices low and concentrating government social spending in urban areas). Countries that have adopted and sustained policies to raise farm incentives have had better agricultural performance in the 1980's, on average, than those where policies continue to discriminate against agriculture.