Year Published
- 2008 (4) Apply 2008 filter
- 2009 (32) Apply 2009 filter
- (-) Remove 2010 filter 2010
- 2011 (26) Apply 2011 filter
- 2012 (21) Apply 2012 filter
- 2013 (17) Apply 2013 filter
- (-) Remove 2014 filter 2014
- 2015 (17) Apply 2015 filter
- 2016 (20) Apply 2016 filter
- (-) Remove 2017 filter 2017
- 2018 (4) Apply 2018 filter
- 2019 (8) Apply 2019 filter
- 2020 (1) Apply 2020 filter
- 2021 (4) Apply 2021 filter
Research Topics
Populations
Types of Research
Geography
- East Africa Region and Selected Countries (13) Apply East Africa Region and Selected Countries filter
- Global (10) Apply Global filter
- South Asia Region and Selected Countries (10) Apply South Asia Region and Selected Countries filter
- Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries (1) Apply Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries filter
- Sub-Saharan Africa (20) Apply Sub-Saharan Africa filter
- West Africa Region and Selected Countries (13) Apply West Africa Region and Selected Countries filter
Dataset
Current search
- (-) Remove 2010 filter 2010
- (-) Remove 2017 filter 2017
- (-) Remove 2014 filter 2014
Estimates suggest that women grow 70-80 percent of Africa’s food crops, which may constrain their involvement in cash crop production, if food crop production places additional demands their time, resources and labor. There is little evidence regarding women’s motivations or decisions to grow cash versus food crops. Similarly, the policy literature on cotton production and markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) does not explicitly address the issue of gender, further limiting the information available on the impact of cotton production on women. This brief provides an overview of the role of women in cotton production, and provides a framework for analyzing barriers to women and technology’s impact on women throughout the cropping cycle. We find that women are typically not the primary cultivators of cotton, and that cotton production is a household cultivation strategy, especially in West and Central Africa. Cotton cultivation often provides access to fertilizers, pesticides and extension services that are otherwise unavailable to households. Women have benefitted from household cotton income when they have input in intra-household resource allocation decisions or when they are able to grow cotton on personal plots and have control over the income it generates. Women also benefit from cotton when it offers them the opportunity to engage in paid labor. The data suggests, however, that cotton cultivation can negatively impact women when it increases their unpaid agricultural labor burden or exposes them to harmful chemicals.
Over the past several decades, donors, multilateral organizations and governments have invested substantial resources in developing and disseminating improved varieties of sorghum and millet in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Researchers believe that sorghum and millet have the ability to improve food security and mitigate the influence of climate change on food production for some of the most vulnerable populations. As a result, agricultural scientists have focused on developing improved cultivars to increase the relative benefits of these two crops and disseminate this technology to a larger number of farmers. This report provides an overview of the development and dissemination of improved sorghum and millet cultivars, factors that influence the adoption of improved cultivars among farmers in SSA, and examples of interventions designed to encourage adoption in SSA. We find that while national governments and international research institutes have successfully developed a number of improved sorghum and millet cultivars, adoption rates in SSA (particularly in West and Central Africa) are low. The literature suggests that overall efforts have increased adoption rates, but at varying costs.