Enhancing the productivity of agriculture is vital for Sub-Saharan Africa's economic future and is one of the most important tools to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity in the region. How governments elect to spend public resources has significant development impact in this regard. Choosing to catalyze a shift toward more effective, efficient, and climate-resilient public spending in agriculture can accelerate change and unleash growth. Not only does agricultural public spending in Sub-Saharan Africa lag behind other developing regions but its impact is vitiated by subsidy programs and transfers that tend to benefit elites to the detriment of poor people and the agricultural sector itself. Shortcomings in the budgeting processes also reduce spending effectiveness. In light of this scenario, addressing the quality of public spending and the efficiency of resource use becomes even more important than addressing only the level of spending. Improvements in the policy environment, better institutions, and investments in rural public goods positively affect agricultural productivity. These, combined with smarter use of public funds, have helped lay the foundations for agricultural productivity growth around the world, resulting in a wealth of important lessons from which African policy makers and development practitioners can draw. 'Reaping Richer Returns: Public Spending Priorities for African Agriculture Productivity Growth' will be of particular interest to policy makers, development practitioners, and academics. The rigorous analysis presented in this book provides options for reform with a view to boosting the productivity of African agriculture and eventually increasing development impact.

A crucial element in enhancing agricultural productivity growth in Africa is improving the provision of productive investments through more and better public spending in agriculture. Agricultural public spending in Africa not only lags behind other developing regions by several metrics of volume, it is also vitiated by misinvestment such as input subsidies programs and transfers that tend to benefit the better off, with insignificant gains for the poor. Shortcomings of the budgeting process also reduce spending effectiveness. Addressing the quality of public spending and the efficiency of resource use is perhaps even more important than addressing the level of spending. Investments in rural public goods combined with better policies and institutions have driven agricultural productivity growth around the world. The dividends from investments to strengthen markets, expand irrigation, develop and adopt improved technologies can be enormous. Despite high returns on such investments, Sub-Saharan African countries grossly underinvest in them. Rebalancing the composition of public agricultural spending would reap massive payoffs. To realize these benefits requires better choices about how to allocate public agricultural spending and how to ensure that budget processes support those allocations. And making those choices will require overcoming the inertia in policymaking that favors continuing with today s inefficient spending and that favors short-term visible programs over much higher, if less visible, long-term gains.

Global growth is projected to be slightly faster in 2020 than the post-crisis low registered last year. While growth could be stronger if reduced trade tensions lead to a sustained reduction in uncertainty, the balance of risks to the outlook is to the downside. Growth in emerging market and developing economies is also expected to remain subdued, continuing a decade of disappointing outcomes. A steep and widespread productivity growth slowdown has been underway in these economies since the global financial crisis, despite the largest, fastest, and most broad-based accumulation of debt since the 1970s. In addition, many emerging market and developing economies, including low-income countries, face the challenge of phasing out price controls that impose heavy fiscal cost and dampen investment. These circumstances add urgency to the need to implement measures to rebuild macroeconomic policy space and to undertake reforms to rekindle productivity growth. These efforts need to be supplemented by policies to promote inclusive and sustainable long-term growth and accelerate poverty alleviation. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing countries, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, whereas the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces.

在新时期，为了更好应对这些挑战，实现中非农业合作的潜力，建议把中非农业合作制度化，并制定一个综合战略规划指导未来的中非农业现代化合作。该综合战略规划将有助于指导和协调中国对非的投资和援助，并在合作过程中与非盟成员国推动农业发展的关键努力相对接。 To address the challenges and fulfill the potential of China-Africa modernization agricultural cooperation in the new era, it is critical to formulate an integrated strategic plan to guide the future development of China-Africa agricultural modernization cooperation. Such a plan is expected to guide and align Chinese investments and collaborative activities with key development efforts of the African Union member states.

Un accès fiable à l’électricité est un impératif pour toute économie moderne. La révolution numérique en fait davantage une exigence cruciale. Et pourtant, le taux d’accès à l’électricité en Afrique subsaharienne reste substantiellement faible. Les ménages et les entreprises sont confrontés à des problèmes de fiabilité et les coûts d’accès et d’usage sont parmi les plus élevés au monde. Cette situation constitue une contrainte majeure pour l’activité économique, la pénétration des nouvelles technologies de l’information, la qualité du service publique et le bien-être social. L’essentiel des efforts visant à garantir la fiabilité du service et à optimiser les coûts s’est focalisé sur l’atténuation des problèmes liés à l’offre. L’offre se caractérise en effet par des investissements inadéquats dans l’entretien des infrastructures entrainant des pertes techniques et financières importantes. Les échanges inter-Etats en matière d’énergie, qui éventuellement pourraient réduire les coûts liés à l’offre demeurent très faibles. Au-delà de l’offre, les contraintes liées à la demande sont parfois beaucoup plus sévères. Alors que la volonté de souscrire au service reste assez faible dans la plupart des communautés, le niveau d’utilisation ne s’est considérablement pas amélioré pour les ménages connectés au réseau. Une croissance de la consommation de l’électricité pourrait dès lors stimuler de nouveaux investissements et progressivement palier au déficit d’accès. Comment y parvenir ? Le livre Accès à l’electricité en Afrique subsaharienne démontre la pertinence d’aborder cette problématique principalement sous l’angle de la pauvreté et du manque d’opportunités plutôt que dans la perspective d’un défi lié à l’accès à l’énergie. L’objectif principal est de permettre non seulement aux ménages et aux entreprises d’avoir un accès fiable à l’électricité et les moyens d’en utiliser, mais surtout de faire en sorte que les compagnies d’électricité puissent recouvrer les coûts de production et de faire du profit. La solution est un mix complexe de facteurs financiers, politiques et géographiques. Le livre recommande que les décideurs adoptent une approche plus globale en mettant l’accent sur les objectifs de développement de long-terme et en se focalisant sur l’usage productif. Cette approche nécessite d’accorder plus d’importance aux problèmes de fiabilité et de systématiquement penser aux facteurs complémentaires nécessaires pour faciliter la promotion des activités génératrices de revenus.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The current structure of the global food system is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. In addition to the environmental impacts of agricultural production, unequal patterns of food access and availability are contributing to non-communicable diseases in middle- and high-income countries and inadequate caloric intake and dietary diversity among the world's poorest. To this end, there have been a growing number of academic and policy initiatives aimed at advancing food system transformation, including the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and several UN Climate conferences. Yet, the policy pathways for achieving a transformed food system are highly contested, and the enabling conditions for implementation are frequently absent. Furthermore, a broad range of polarizing factors affect decisions over the food system at domestic and international levels - from debates over values and (mis)information, to concerns over food self-sufficiency, corporate influence, and human rights. This volume explicitly analyses the political economy dynamics of food system transformation with contributors who span several disciplines, including economics, ecology, geography, nutrition, political science, and public policy. The chapters collectively address the range of interests, institutions, and power in the food system, the diversity of coalitions that form around food policy issues and the tactics they employ, the ways in which policies can be designed and sequenced to overcome opposition to reform, and processes of policy adaptation and learning. Drawing on original surveys, interviews, empirical modelling, and case studies from China, the European Union, Germany, Mexico, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States, the book touches on issues as wide ranging as repurposing agricultural subsidies, agricultural trade, biotechnology innovations, red meat consumption, sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, and much more.