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Donor countries and multilateral organizations may pursue multiple goals with foreign aid, including supporting low-income country development for strategic/security purposes (national security, regional political stability) and for short-and long-term economic interests (market development and access, local and regional market stability). While the literature on the effectiveness of aid in supporting progress on different indicators of country development is inconclusive, donors are interested in evidence that aid funding is not permanent but rather contributes to a process by which recipient countries develop to a point that they are economically self-sufficient. In this report, we review the literature on measures of country self-sufficiency and descriptive evidence from illustrative case studies to explore conditions associated with transitions toward self-sufficiency in certain contexts.
An ongoing stream of EPAR research considers how public good characteristics of different types of research and development (R&D) and the motivations of different providers of R&D funding affect the relative advantages of alternative funding sources. For this project, we seek to summarize the key public good characteristics of R&D investment for agriculture in general and for different subsets of crops, and hypothesize how these characteristics might be expected to affect public, private, or philanthropic funders’ investment decisions.
Cereals and pulses are important food and cash crops for farmers and rural households in Ethiopia. Despite the economic and food security importance of these crops, data and opinion suggest a yield gap: actual smallholder farm yields do not achieve estimated potential yields for wheat, sorghum, maize, lentils and peas. Furthermore, cereal prices in Ethiopia fall between import and export parity prices, limiting their international trading prospects. Although there are significant wheat imports, these reflect the influx of food aid, rather than competitive trade on the international market. The purpose of this brief is to estimate yield gaps in important Ethiopian crops in order to identify potential areas for productivity gains. We find that wheat, sorghum and maize all exhibit the potential for yield gains to increase domestic food availability. Additionally, all three crops experienced significant spikes in yield in the 2006 season. Further investigation into the climate conditions and policy in place that year may generate potential strategies to increase future yields. Analysis of Ethiopian lentil and pea yields suggest that productivity gains may be possible to increase food availability. Limited access to improved technologies appears to be the main constraint to pulse productivity in Ethiopia. Opportunities to increase lentil and pea yields appear to exist through increasing cultivation of improved varieties.
This literature review provides a summary of the risks that potentially limit private sector agribusiness investment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and some responses to those risks. The report reviews risks that limit private sector investment and interventions used to mitigate risk to agricultural investment including government policy, international financial institutions, philanthropic efforts and other private initiatives. Risk is defined as a potential negative impact to assets, investments, or profitability of investments in the agricultural industry that may arise from some present process or future event. There is currently limited information examining how particular risk factors influence private-sector agribusiness investment in the region. However, the information that is available suggests that economic and political instability are among the most significant risks to agribusiness investors in SSA. Further, the literature notes that agricultural risks in SSA are particularly pronounced due to environmental risks that contribute to unreliable cash flows and uncertain profitability. We find that these risk factors are compounded by a lack of data and information for investors to use in assessing and pricing risks appropriately.
This research brief reports on full time equivalent (fte) positions devoted to research and development of major food and cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Data on fte by country and crop were collected from individual Agricultural Science and Technology Indicator (ASTI) country briefs. ASTI data are obtained from unpublished surveys conducted by CGIAR centers. Our report includes 23 countries in SSA.