IFAD Research and Knowledge

The Programme de Microfinance Rural (PMR) was implemented in the rural, impoverished
regions of Koulikoro, Kayes, Ségou, Sikasso and Mopti in Mali with support from the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This paper shares the results of a
qualitative study designed to improve understanding of the programme’s delivery and explore its
impacts in terms of collective agency and efficacy, as well as the use of resources in
households, with attention paid to the role of gender in addressing these issues. The findings
suggest that the PMR actively engaged women and expanded access to loans through
community-based credit groups. It also overcame negative community experiences with
previous microfinance programmes to maintain a positive local reputation. In many cases, the
PMR led to significant economic benefits for women but, in other cases, loan repayment terms
posed a challenge. The collective agency of PMR credit groups built upon progress made by
similar community groups in existence prior to the arrival of the PMR. The resources provided
by the PMR strengthened these groups and helped enable them to expand their collective
efficacy and ability to benefit the community more broadly. Women were most often the target
loan recipients and frequently had a strong voice in the PMR groups, which were influential in
the community. There is little evidence, however, that the PMR activities and credit group
participation spilled over to strengthen either women’s political power in the community or their
influence and empowerment in their own households. The paper concludes with specific
recommendations for strengthening future iterations of the PMR or similar programmes.

The official definition for determining which areas are urban and which are rural in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be characterized by dichotomous criteria based mainly on the number of inhabitants. This fails to consider either the changing and highly diverse context of rural areas or their increasing productive diversification and interaction with urban and intermediate areas. A fresh measure of what constitutes rurality will sharpen understanding of territories and strengthen public policies directed toward these areas, where the most pronounced disadvantages for meeting the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals are encountered. This article summarizes the main findings of a joint technical project between the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Mexico and Panama, which aimed to generate new methods for defining and measuring rurality. Two index proposals are presented for the two studied countries: the relative rurality index and the contiguity of areas of similar densities. This research provides: (i) a methodological approach for the construction of alternative rurality scenarios; (ii) cartographic and statistical information for the socioeconomic characterization and analysis of territories; and (iii) applied analysis for strengthening development policies for rural areas in Mexico and Panama within the framework of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The achievement of the goal of zero hunger by 2030 can be facilitated through green
growth investments in the agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) sector. Significant
levels of finance are needed to support countries to implement such strategies and fulfil the
commitments made in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and private
finance remains a key source. This report is a useful guide to shape investments by IFAD,
and other international donors, in climate change mitigation actions in the East and
Southern Africa (ESA) region.
We quantify the ESA countries’ mitigation commitments with a focus on the AFOLU sector
and introduce cost-effectiveness criteria to evaluate such capacity, also in view of attracting
private financing. Our results show that most emissions in the region come from the energy
sector, followed by AFOLU. Full implementation of conditional and unconditional mitigation
targets set forth in the NDCs would limit the increase in regional net emissions to about 20
per cent above the baseline. We argue that mitigation investments can be prioritized to
enhance the efficiency of available financing (economy of scope), maximize the mitigation
results (economy of scale) and create synergies with economic development needs.
However, trade-offs exist from the perspective of social equity and economic development
goals.
In its 12th replenishment cycle, IFAD has increased its focus on mitigation. In line with this,
we find that investment in AFOLU is a profitable way to invest in climate change mitigation,
being more competitive than energy and other sectors in attracting mitigation finance.
Investing in mitigation through AFOLU is certainly more feasible given the increasing prices
recorded in the carbon market. Revenues from this market may provide the necessary
resources to fill the funding gap and drive a competitive restructure of the AFOLU sector to
help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Prioritizing low-income countries would
minimize the trade-offs and enhance the synergies between mitigation and economic
development, therefore supporting socio-economic growth.

Overweight and obesity rates across low- and middle-income countries have approached levels found in high-income countries. While overweight and obesity are more prevalent in urban areas, they are also on the rise in rural areas. Little research has been conducted on the effects of food systems on overweight and obesity. This paper presents the findings of a
comprehensive literature review of the evidence on the main drivers of overweight and obesity, described using a food systems framework and illustrated with concrete examples from five countries. Available evidence on intervention strategies with the potential to prevent and/or reduce overweight and obesity was also reviewed and compared with
identified drivers and practice-based examples from the selected countries. This paper shows how systemic the issue of overweight and obesity is, with drivers being present in nearly each segment of the food system. It helps to explain the complexities of addressing
overweight and obesity across different levels, and why there are few proven interventions that are effective at the individual level. The study results show that food system-related interventions are applying traditional approaches such as food package labelling, price manipulation and changing the food environment, and that there is a gap in evidence on what works and what does not. The findings in this paper could be used to inform future agriculture and food systems investments for better nutrition and health outcomes.

The Coastal Climate Resilient Infrastructure Project (CCRIP) is a $150 million rural infrastructure project which was implemented in 12 districts of Bangladesh since 2013, and is due to be completed by the end of 2019. The project is funded by IFAD, the ADB, KfW of Germany, and the Government of Bangladesh. The project aims to improve the connectivity of farms and households in the face of climatic shocks, focusing on one of the most shock-prone areas of one of the most shock-prone countries in the world. The main component of the project is the construction of improved markets and market connecting roads, that are designed to remain useable during the monsoon season. This is expected to improve sales of on-farm produce, along with access to inputs as well as opportunities for off-farm income generation, leading to increased productivity and income. The project also aims to improve women's empowerment by employing Labour Contracting Societies (LCS), consisting mainly of destitut...

Farmers in western Madagascar live in an arid region that makes it difficult to survive on their own production. As in many other regions in less developed countries, there is a big initiative to improve agricultural production. Agricultural development is particularly important for a country like Madagascar, with 77.8% of the population living in rural settings (Rasambainarivo & Ranaivoarivelo, 2003). In such a dry region, it is important to understand whether large-scale investments in irrigation infrastructure can improve outcomes for smallholder farmers. To do so, we focused on crop yields, cropping in multiple seasons and improved agricultural practices. We identified these outcomes as key indicators of improved agricultural livelihoods. Appui au Développement du Menabe et du Melaky (AD2M) farmers had the opportunity to change the way they grow crops. The programme created new irrigation infrastructure in areas that had not been irrigated, and rehabilitated existing irrigation ...

Research Series Issue 62: The spillover effects of seed producer groups on non-member farmers in mid-hill communities of Nepal June 2020 Rice farmers in the mid-hills region of Nepal are vulnerable to drought, which can drastically reduce yields. Stress-tolerant rice varieties (STRVs) can mitigate this vulnerability, as can having a high seed replacement rate and using best management practices (BMPs) in rice cultivation. In 2013, IFAD established and trained 12 seed producer groups (SPGs) across three districts in Nepal to improve local access to STRV seed. This paper presents propensity-score–weighted regressions used to estimate the spillover effects of SPGs on the adoption of STRVs and BMPs, as well as on the seed replacement rate of non-member households in villages with an SPG, or that are next to a village with an SPG, compared to randomly selected villages in the region.

While policy engagement is increasingly considered a key dimension of development cooperation, there have been few attempts by development agencies to systematically monitor and evaluate the impact of their work in this area. In recent years, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has sought to strengthen its engagement in country-level policy processes, and to develop a range of tools to more effectively monitor and evaluate this work. In this context, it commissioned a piece of work to develop and test a methodology for assessing its policy impact. The exercise served to review four purposively sampled IFAD policy engagement activities, in India, Indonesia, Nepal and Viet Nam, and analyse their impact; identify the factors contributing to, or limiting, the outcomes achieved and draw out lessons for future policy work; and propose a replicable methodology that could be used for similar exercises elsewhere. The methodology was found to provide, in a relatively sh...

This analysis examines the dynamics of youth employment in agriculture and the agri-food system in Tanzania and Malawi - in and out of agriculture and the agri-food system. The study finds that when extending the definition of a farmer beyond household heads, that the average age of individuals participating in agriculture is 34 years in Tanzania, and 31 years in Malawi. In addition, there is a high degree of short-term stability in farming in both countries. 59 per cent of rural youth in Tanzania and 56 per cent in Malawi are consistently engaged in farming. While the figures are encouraging, it is likely that the poor economic prospects outside farming are what is driving strong participation in single-occupation farming. To increase youth employment, it is recommended that Tanzania and Malawi diversify the rural economy by creating opportunities in the agri-food system.

What would it mean to develop a youth-inclusive agricultural and rural development agenda? Agriculture, and particularly smallholder farming, remains the single largest source of youth employment in most low- and middle-income countries but today’s young rural men and women express little interest in agricultural futures. Research on rural youth aspirations suggests that many young people are not averse to agriculture as such, but to agriculture’s current neglected condition and the near impossibility of becoming an independent farmer while still young, due to lack of access to land. A youth-inclusive agricultural and rural development agenda means approaching young people not as instruments of development, but as subjects, actors and citizens.

Despite the importance of rural youth for productivity, growth and development in lower- and middleincome countries, these populations have some of the highest rates of unemployment in the world. Rural youth face particular constraints in terms of labour market participation, including smaller social networks, low literacy rates, less work experience and limited access to capital (Robalino et al, 2013). Youth employment programmes have the potential to address these constraints, but they are often characterized by low enrolment, high dropout and uncertain returns. While the growth of digital technology offers new opportunities to address some of the issues associated with youth employment, research on their impacts is limited and results are mixed. We review existing research on the impact of digital initiatives on youth in the education, agriculture, financial and employment sectors, before proposing several ways forward for using digital technology to improve the impact of these programmes.

Despite a burgeoning literature on youth employment, little is known about the economic activities of rural youth, including whether rural transformation, seen through the lens of the agrifood system (AFS) will create new opportunities for youth. Using data on hours worked of 467,453 workingage individuals in four age cohorts (early youth, later youth, early adulthood, later adulthood) and a rural-urban gradient based on population density (rural hinterland, intermediate, peri-urban and urban zones) in 188,996 households in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we provide empirical evidence on this gap in literature. We find that no region allocates more than 37 per cent of their labour hours to on-farm employment, but when including off-farm AFS self- and wage employment, total AFS accounts for half of all hours worked. Even in Latin America, off-farm AFS accounts for 21 per cent of hours worked, demonstrating the importance of pre- and postfarm value added for employment creation. Youth appear to access off-farm AFS opportunities more easily than non-AFS ones, especially wage employment in urban and peri-urban zones. These findings dispute the narrative that youth do not enter farming and cannot get wage jobs, as youth work substantial hours in both sectors with distinct spatial patterns.

As stated in its Strategic Framework 2016-2025, the overarching goal for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is to invest in rural people to enable them to overcome poverty and achieve food security through remunerative, sustainable, and resilient livelihoods. IFAD pursues this goal through three closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing strategic objectives: (i) increasing rural people’s productive capacities; (ii) increasing rural people’s benefits from market participation; and (iii) strengthening the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of rural people’s economic activities. To hold itself accountable on progress made in achieving this goal and these three strategic objectives, IFAD has adopted a unique approach to reporting impact at the corporate level, building on rigorous project-level evaluations. This report provides the results of these efforts to assess the corporate impact of IFAD investments for the Tenth Replenishment of IFAD’s...

Despite the progress made over the last decades across several socio-economic indicators, poverty incidence remains persistently high in São Tomé e Príncipe, with over two-thirds of the population living below the poverty line of US$3.2 (World Bank 2018). A set of constraints imposed by the country's insularity, small market size and agroecological conditions make the country extremely vulnerable to market and climate shocks. Its economy relies heavily on imports, which are counterbalanced by a narrow set of exports, with cacao taking the lion share (approximately 70% of total exports, World Bank 2018). Agricultural production, however, has declined since the country's independence in 1975 and productivity has remained consistently low, hindering economic wellbeing and progress of rural livelihoods, particularly of those relying on small-scale farming as a key source of income. The two projects evaluated in this report - the Participatory Smallholder Agriculture and Artisana...

Over half of the rural population in Bolivia today live below the national poverty line. As agriculture represents the main source of livelihood for more than 75 per cent of this rural population, supporting the livelihoods of rural farming households is key to tackling extreme poverty in the country. In August 2011, implementation began on the project Plan VIDA-PEEP (PPV), an initiative financed jointly between IFAD and the Bolivian Government as part of the country's National Development Plan. It aimed to improve the livelihoods of households residing in vulnerable municipalities in the departments of Potosi and Cochabamba through capacity building, financing of rural development projects, and supporting citizenship and social inclusion. The project lasted five years in total and was completed in December, 2016. Plan VIDA was implemented in 8 municipalities in the southern part of Cochabamba department, and in 14 municipalities in the northern area of the Potosí department. Th...

Decades of agricultural research have led to the development of technological innovations and improved farming practices that hold a huge potential for increasing agricultural production and achieving global food security. However, the level of dissemination and adoption of this knowledge is still inadequate, especially among smallholder farmers in developing countries. In an effort to enhance the adoption of such technical innovations and improved practices, agricultural extension approaches like Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have been widely advocated. FFS are usually participatory and informal methods of training and assisting farmers in their own locality, to adopt and adapt new technologies that can improve their farming practices. The ASDP-L and ASSP projects were implemented in Zanzibar between 2007 to 2017, with an aim to contribute towards the Government initiatives to increase agricultural productivity and profitability, generate employment in rural areas and ensure national ...

This report presents results of an ex-post impact assessment (IA) of select components of the PRICE project relating to coffee, horticulture and financial services. The IA was conducted between May 2017 and July 2018 and used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The current report mainly focuses on the quantitative results, while drawing on some of the insights from the qualitative survey. The quantitative results are based on secondary panel data of 85 coffee cooperatives observed over six years between 2012 and 2017 (510 observations) and two cross-sectional primary datasets collected using household surveys in 2018: (i) a sample of 2894 coffee farmers who are members of the coffee cooperatives observed over six years and (ii) 1584 horticulture farmers for the horticulture-finance component. We used a variety of quasi experimental and non-experimental design methods to estimate our results, namely difference-in-difference estimations for the cooperative-level panel ...

Smallholder rice farming is central to poverty reduction, food security, and rural development in the Philippines. Currently, rice affordability is threatened by the country's protectionist approach to rice imports and low production efficiency. One key issue is that around 41 percent of the country's irrigable land is not irrigated. Moreover, many irrigation systems are suggested to be poorly managed with unequal water distribution. The Irrigated Rice Production Enhancement Project (IRPEP) was implemented in three regions (VI, VII and X) of the Philippines between 2010-2015. It was designed to improve rice productivity and smallholder livelihoods by strengthening canal irrigation infrastructure of Communal Irrigation Systems (CIS), improving the capacity of the Irrigators' Associations (IAs) that manage the CIS, and offering complementary marketing support, Farmer Field Schools, and emergency seed buffer stocks. As the government provides FFS and buffer stocks to farmer...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries often lack appropriate cereal storage facilities which can contribute to food insecurity and low cereal commercialization, particularly when they can only rely on one cropping season with no irrigation. Lack of quality storage can lead to post-harvest losses (Abass et al, 2014; Sheahan and Barrett, 2017) and often compels smallholder farmers to sell their crops soon after harvest, when crop prices are at their seasonal lowest, only for them to buy grain for consumption during the lean season, when prices are high (Kadjo et al, 2018; Aggarwal et al, 2018; Stephens and Barrett, 2011). In many instances, such farmers need food assistance to survive the lean season and in other cases, they may have to borrow money at usurious rates in order to purchase food. This was the case in Guéra Region of Chad, a semi-arid area that frequently experiences droughts and dry spells in ways that severely reduce crop production and rural households' food ...

Improving market access of smallholder farmers in the developing world is considered an important approach to moving them out of poverty and increasing their economic mobility. In China, rural poverty has declined at a phenomenal speed within just two decades, and much of this success story is attributable to rapid income growth in rural areas. Thus, having a good understanding of how development efforts in rural China may help alleviate poverty and improving economic mobility is of particular interest for policy, as they are instrumental in informing future project design and scaling-up of success stories to other regions in China as well as to other countries. The Guangxi Integrated Agricultural Development Project (GIADP) is an example of a development effort aimed at increasing rural household income in China through three project components: community infrastructure development, agricultural production and marketing support, and rural environmental improvement. The project was ...

This report assesses the impact of the High Value Agriculture Project in Hill and Mountain Areas (HVAP) of Nepal co-financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Government of Nepal (GoN), and the SNV Netherlands Development Organization. The project was implemented between February 2011 and September 2018, and aimed at reducing rural poverty and improving food security in the remote hill and mountainous areas of the landlocked state. Nepal's geographical landscape presents numerous challenges to local economic growth and rural development. The livelihood of the people living in Nepal's rugged landscape is often characterized by low agricultural productivity, and limited access to markets and services. HVAP is a unique project both in terms of its geographical coverage and its type of interventions provided to the target groups. Its unique feature is the inclusive value chain development component which links different actors in the agricultural...

The dairy sector in Kenya is one of the largest and most developed in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for four percent of its gross domestic product. Despite high production volumes, the sector is still dominated by smallholder farmers who rely on livestock for income and food security. Dairy farmers face a number of barriers to increased profitability, including animal diseases, lack of access to artificial insemination and other veterinary services, high costs of improved technologies, such as silage equipment, inadequate access to markets, poor rural infrastructure and unsteady supply of quality animal fodder. The Smallholder Dairy Commercialisation Programme (SDCP) was funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and implemented by the Government of Kenya from 2005 – 2015. It was designed to reach 600 dairy groups (24,000 smallholder dairy farmers) in nine counties. SDCP provided training to dairy farmers to build their enterprise, managerial and organisat...

Countries of the Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central Asia region face a myriad of social, economic and political challenges that have stalled their structural and rural transformation processes. The region has the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. Weak education systems are failing to provide youth, especially in rural areas, with the skills they need to compete in a global economy. The resulting high rates of joblessness, unemployment and informal work have encouraged rural youth to migrate to urban areas and abroad in search of better opportunities. This study reviews the opportunities and challenges facing rural youth in the region and suggests a number of programmes and policy priorities that governments can take into consideration.

This study offers a general picture of the situation of rural youth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The population is described through its demographic dynamics, its socio-economic characteristics, the situation of priority groups, such as women and indigenous people. The available data regarding these dimensions are presented noting the existing gaps both about urban youth and about adults and contrasting the data with the available literature on youth in the region. There are still gaps between rural and urban youth in the areas of poverty, education and workforce integration in every country, although with important differences between them. Thus, rural youth appear to be an especially vulnerable group, a situation that is aggravated in women, indigenous people and Afro-descendants.

Despite accounting for only 7 per cent of the world's population, rural youth account for more than 10 per cent of the world's conflict-exposed population. In 2016, alone, over 350 million rural youth lived in conflict-affected countries. Despite conflict's being defined as "development in reverse", however, we find a general lack of research focusing specifically on young people living in rural areas. Yet, from wider literature, we know that conflict is a cause of adversities across a range of economic and non-economic indicators. When young people experience violence in consecutive life stages, adversities from one stage – such as weakened education – can be carried forward into subsequent life stages - such as transition to employment. In this background paper, we show that exposure to violence increases infant mortality, reduces birthweight, harms child health, damages human capital accumulation, restricts performance in education and interacts negatively w...

International discussions on climate change increasingly recognize the importance of agriculture in adaptation and mitigation efforts. This study estimates the mitigation potential of agricultural practices supported by IFAD's current investments in order to provide guidance for the design of future investments. Using data from field studies in scientific literature, this research estimates the effects of a large set of agricultural practices promoted by IFAD (and other development agencies) on soil organic carbon stocks, nitrous oxide emissions from soils, and methane emissions from rice paddies. Findings identify soil and rice management practices with the largest mitigation potential and those that can potentially increase emissions; discuss uncertainties in mitigation analyses; and provide recommendations to improve monitoring of mitigation benefits.

This paper examines the impact of agricultural research on poverty and welfare by conducting a systematic review of experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations of improved varieties disseminated by CGIAR between 2007 and 2015. The analysis focuses on the adoption of improved seeds, and specifically yield-increasing varieties, examining their direct causal impact from uptake on crop productivity gains, increased income and poverty reduction. The paper finds that agricultural research and improved varieties have been effectively contributing to productivity gains, however more efforts are needed to improve the evidence base to validate the positive impacts and encourage donors to invest in this area of agricultural research.

This paper aims to better understand the context in which smallholder farms operate. The study has developed a new methodology to establish country-wide farm typologies that combines household and macro-level data (household survey, agricultural census and land cover data) to analyze food security and poverty, to enable an analysis that is both farm-system specific and spatially explicit. Using this methodology to analyze the poverty and food security situation of Ethiopian smallholder farms, the study has developed farming-system- and location-specific poverty and food security indicators which can provide guidance for more targeted strategies to reduce rural poverty.

Investments in irrigation systems have been shown to substantially improve farmers' productivity, and thus alleviate poverty. This study provides an example of such an investment: the Participatory Small-Scale Irrigation Development Programme. The project institutionalized water user associations, developed small-scale irrigation schemes, and provided agricultural training activities to smallholder farmers in drought-prone and food-deficit areas in four regions of Ethiopia. Combining a primary household survey with geographical data, this work estimates the project impact on agricultural production and household expenditure using a novel identification strategy. Beneficiaries' gains include improved crop yields and greater diversity of crops cultivated. These gains have the potential to raise revenues and enable a switch from subsistence to purchasing more food from the market. The lessons learned from this study, by highlighting the need to focus on strengthening access to ...

This paper addresses an important gap regarding the systematic knowledge and evidence on how value chains can contribute to nutrition, while remaining financially viable and inclusive of smallholder farmers. It does so by reviewing the literature on linkages between value chains and nutrition from a smallholder perspective, and presenting an analytical framework for the development of nutrition-sensitive value chains. The review identified multiple interventions that can serve the goals of income generation and nutrition improvement of smallholders, while also contributing to environmental sustainability and gender empowerment. But trade-offs exist too. By applying a nutrition lens to the different stages of the value chain, challenges and opportunities across these dimensions can be identified to promote development of nutrition-sensitive value chains.

This study estimates the impact of agricultural research, specifically improved maize seeds varieties, on agricultural productivity and welfare in Uganda using a three-wave panel survey. First, it looks at the determinants of technology adoption are examined in a dynamic setting that allows for state dependence, in the adoption decision process. The analysis shows that previous adoption is very important in explaining contemporary adoption. Then, it examines the impact of improved maize seeds adoption on welfare, notably consumption-expenditure, poverty, and agricultural outcomes such as yields. Findings show that the magnitude of impacts is fairly similar across the different models. Estimates for the daily per adult equivalent expenditure increased by a range of 5-16% as a result of agricultural technology (total agricultural production increased by a range of 5-13%) and the proportion poor set with the daily 2 US $PPP per capita poverty threshold decreased by a range of 4-12%. In...

This study offers empirical evidence on the rural-urban gap in the context of growing inequality in Asia. First, China and India explain the trends in regional inequality given their large populations, signifying their importance as major contributors. Overall, China's income inequality is characterized by rural-urban disparity, but the inequality within rural and within urban areas has worsened, although the country has experienced very high economic growth. India is mainly characterized by high inequality within urban areas, despite a sharp reduction in urban poverty. India's rural-urban income gap has narrowed in recent years. We also find that the rural-urban income gap has narrowed in many other countries, such as Thailand and Viet Nam. Second, our econometric results on the agricultural and non-agricultural income gap suggest that a higher non-agricultural growth rate tends to widen the rural-urban gap over time, while agricultural growth is unrelated to the rural-urba...

This paper aims to identify the main drivers of poverty reduction in Malawi. Using an augmented poverty decomposition methodology, it explores in what way the different farm and non-farm economic activities contribute to poverty reduction and income growth. The analysis also examines how household occupation and spatial mobility support both poverty reduction and household welfare improvements. Findings show that the increase in non-farm self-employment is the most significant contributor to poverty reduction overall, even though agriculture still exerts a considerable and positive influence, especially due to the size of the population involved and the observance of agricultural growth.

This paper aims to explore the influence of nutrition-sensitive interventions on dietary profiles of the beneficiaries of IFAD-funded projects. Drawing on a desk review of 37 IFAD funded projects in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region, the study used a cross sectional survey data from a purposive sample from selected countries where data collection was done (Kenya, Zambia, and Mozambique). The findings indicate that the development interventions have diverse nutritional impacts resulting from production related activities, ranging from training to the provision of inputs and services, including labour and energy- saving technologies. Moreover, results confirm that agricultural and rural development investments on food production and household income growth present many opportunities to positively influence dietary profiles of households. On the basis of these findings, the paper recommends the integration of existing and planned nutrition sensitive interventions targeting b...

Based on cross-country panel datasets, we find that (i) an increase in population share in agriculture is associated with poverty reduction once the longer-term poverty change or dynamic is taken into account; (ii) the rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty-reducing in some cases; and (iii) increased population in the megacities has no role in poverty reduction. In fact, the growth of the populations in megacities increases poverty in a few cases. Given that rapid population growth or rural-urban migration is likely to increase poverty, more emphasis should be placed on policies that enhance support for rural agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. If our analysis has any validity, doubts are raised about recent research that emphasizes the role of secondary towns and urbanization as the main drivers to reduce extreme poverty.

This paper challenges the traditional view that portrays income maximization as the main driver of migration and tests whether relative deprivation and social inequality lead to migration in sub-Saharan Africa. Examining data from the Living Standards Measurements Study – Integrated Surveys in Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda, the paper finds that a household's migration decision is based not only on its well-being status, but also on the position of the household relative to the wealth distribution in the local community. Results indicate that relative deprivation of wealth was positively associated with migration, implying a need to renew the discussion of relative deprivation and social inequality as a cause of migration in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) can be a useful tool to measure the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector. However, computing the WEAI in its current form involves large data requirements, resulting in lengthy surveys with several questions on various dimensions and indicators within each dimension. This paper proposes a reduced version of the WEAI, or the R-WEAI, and examines two possible approaches to reduce the data requirements while ensuring comparability to the full WEAI.

Cash transfer and agricultural support programmes are both used to improve nutrition outcomes in developing countries. This paper examines previous reviews of the impact of these programmes and compares the evidence between the two. The paper finds that, although there are about the same number of programmes of each type, many more papers have been written about the cash transfer programmes than the agricultural programmes. While evidence suggests that both programme types improved the quality of food consumption, the paper concludes that both types show weak evidence of improvements in anthropometric outcomes.

This study describes the shifting age and sex patterns of populations across rural and urban sectors in sub‑Saharan Africa from 1980 to 2015. It examines the relationship between the slowdown in urbanization and rural and urban age structure gaps, sex composition and dependency ratios. Findings show that rural-urban migration of young adults plays a key role in explaining dependency ratios and sex compositional gaps in rural and urban areas. Results also highlight the value of taking into account local age and sex structures to better prepare for the demographic dividend and other consequences of demographic shifts in sub-Saharan Africa.