Agricultural Policy in Africa and Technological Change

December 13, 2017

Moderator: John Yearwood, Executive Board Chairman, International Press Institute - Omar Amadou Jallow, Minister of Agriculture, The Gambia - Gordon Conway, Professor, International Development, Imperial College London - Adriana Mesquita Corrêa Bueno, Coordinator, Technical Cooperation Coordination, Secretariat of International Affairs, Embrapa - Peter Rogers, Gordon McKay Professor, Environmental Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

 

Speakers
John Yearwood
President and CEO, Yearwood Media Group
An award-winning multimedia journalist, John Yearwood is President and CEO of Yearwood Media Group, a global consulting and content creation firm. In his role as President/CEO of Yearwood Media, he advises companies seeking to do business in emerging markets, with a particular focus on Africa and Asia. In 2019, he was appointed honorary chair of the the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention, which convened 4,100 black journalists in Miami. He sits on several boards, including the Austria-based International Press Institute, where he is the former chairman. Former world editor of the Miami Herald. The World Desk won numerous awards under his leadership, including two McClatchy Company President’s Awards and the Arthur Ross Award for best coverage of Latin ...
Prof. Peter Rogers
Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering
Prof Peter Rogers Prof. Rogers is Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and Professor of City Planning in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Water Partnership, recipient of Guggenheim and Twentieth Century Fellowships. His research interests include: the consequences of population on natural resources development ; conflict resolution in international river basins ; improved methods for managing natural resources and the environment, with emphasis on the use of analytic optimizing methods to incorporate both the natural phenomena and the engineering controls ; the impacts of global change on water resources, and the development of indices of environmental quality ...

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    Tharcisse Guedegbe
    September 27, 2019
    This paper is about the basic principles which should guide fertilizer policy for smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa It is not about detailed country-specific prescriptions on the “how” of policy. This important task should constitute the substance of detailed country studies. The overarching goal here is to use fertilizer to spearhead and sustain an African Green Revolution (GR). In this paper, fertilizer use is not considered as an end in itself, but as a necessary mean ...
  • Authors
    Under the direction of
    Philippe Chalmin
    April 9, 2019
    Commodity prices were once again marked by significant volatility in 2017 and 2018. While there are many economic factors to explain this, politics were also present—trade tensions between China and the United States and, more generally, a rise in uncertainties—weighing upon the global macroeconomic outlook and the ‘dynamism of the markets’. Africa, which has countries with strong growth rates, has, however, been able to show solid economic performance, and this trajectory is not li ...
  • Authors
    Hamza Rkha Chaham
    April 3, 2019
    The author is an alumnus of the 2018 Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program Arable land per capita availability has been steadily decreasing over the last decades, from 0.5 hectare per capita in 1945 to 0.2 hectares per capita in 2016. Worldwide farmers have been, more or less, addressing the intensification challenge by incorporating new technologies, products, and techniques into their farming systems. The intensification challenge also implied a consolidation of the farming ...
  • Authors
    Abdelkabir Kamili
    November 14, 2018
    Le présent article expose, outre une analyse holistique du secteur national de production halieutique, les résultats d’un travail de recherche sur l’impact d’un éventuel changement des prix mondiaux des intrants (notamment le pétrole) et des produits de la pêche sur les aspects économiques et biologiques du secteur. Les résultats de ce travail indiquent que ce secteur a peu de réactivité face à la hausse du prix mondial des intrants, alors qu’en réaction à l’augmentation des prix à ...
  • Authors
    Tharcisse Guèdègbé
    October 25, 2018
    Le progrès économique et social du Maroc passe par des objectifs de croissance dans l’agriculture, secteur prioritaire dans les stratégies et les politiques de développement. Plus encore, les gains de productivité globale des facteurs sont déterminants pour l’amélioration du niveau de vie. Le présent travail de recherche a consisté à comprendre l’évolution de la performance du secteur agricole au Maroc, en étudiant les contributions relatives des facteurs de production et de la prod ...
  • October 18, 2018
    L'agriculture intelligente face au climat (AIC) est une approche qui permet de définir les mesures nécessaires pour transformer et réorienter les systèmes agricoles dans le but de souteni ...
  • Authors
    Mouhamadou Moustapha Ly
    Tharcisse Guedegbe
    September 19, 2018
    La ville de Kigali, au Rwanda, a accueilli du 5 au 8 septembre 2018 le forum de l’AGRA, devenant ainsi la capitale de l’agriculture africaine pendant ces quatre journées. Délégations gouvernementales, partenaires techniques et financiers, chercheurs, universitaires, investisseurs, producteurs, club de réflexion, entre autres, étaient en conclave pour faire l’état des lieux du secteur et mesurer les progrès accomplis sur la route de la transformation de l’agriculture africaine.  A t ...
  • Authors
    Tharcisse Guèdègbé
    August 29, 2018
    African leaders have made many commitments to promote strong growth in the agricultural sector, with a focus on productivity, in particular by using fertilizers. Currently, progress is slow. Goals have not yet been reached in most countries, as the favorable conditions required to do so have not been created. Targeted action is needed to reduce transaction costs and to improve farmers’ access to fertilizers. However, such action will have limited impact without the introduction of a ...
  • Authors
    Tharcisse Guèdègbé
    August 29, 2018
    De nombreux engagements ont été pris par les dirigeants africains en vue d’induire une forte croissance agricole en mettant l’accent sur la productivité, notamment par le recours aux engrais. Actuellement, les progrès sont lents et les engagements pris ne sont, pour la majeure partie des pays, pas encore respectés, faute de non mise en place de conditions favorables à l’atteinte de ces objectifs. Des interventions ciblées sont nécessaires pour réduire les coûts de transaction et amé ...
  • Authors
    July 23, 2018
    Why do farmers need access to newer technologies on a recurrent basis? Most subsistence farmers already know how to farm and undertake post-harvest processing from their parents. The main reason to turn to technology is that traditional techniques for subsistence agriculture are grossly insufficient when it comes to generating the productivity and output growth required to adequately lift millions out of poverty and keep them out of it. “Efficient but poor” as Schultz (1964:37) put ...