Agricultural Issues
Afram Plains Farmers Quadruple Food Production
Barring any unforseen developments, the Afram Plains will soon give full meaning to its accolade of Ghana's major food basket. A tour of the two farming districts of Kwahu Afram Plains North and Kwahu Afrarm Plains South depicted that farmers there are now able to cultivate four times bigger acreages than they did previously, and their output per acre has more than quadrupled, thanks to such simple-but-effective technologies as irrigation pumps, improved seeds and animal breeds. [more]
Agric Ministry Urged to Develop Guideline for Selection of Project Beneficiaries
Government has been urged to pay attention to women in agriculture, who constitute majority of smallholder farmers, and provide them with the needed support. [more]
Reports
Microfinance As a Poverty Alleviation Tool for Women in Ghana’s Informal Sector?
A Thesis Submitted to Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
This study aims to explore whether microfinance is an effective poverty alleviation tool for women in Ghana’s informal sector. The paper suggests that microfinance has made only limited progress as a poverty alleviation scheme for women in Ghana’s informal sector because despite moderate improvement in building assets and reducing vulnerabilities, microfinance clients have not been lifted out of poverty, but have instead progressed to a more modest form of poverty. [more]
The Emperor has no Data! Agricultural Statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Few people would contest the assertion that agricultural development is an essential engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 75 percent of the extreme poor still reside in rural areas, and over 90 percent participate in agriculture. While the debate rages on how to best harness the still untapped potential of agriculture to reduce poverty in SSA, in this paper a more primordial, yet equally important, question is tackled: how much is really known about the state of agriculture in Africa and its contribution to the “wealth of the nations”? To that end, in this paper we describe a number of initiatives aimed at addressing the problem of quality of agricultural statistics in Africa and highlight selected work in the area of methodological research in agricultural data collection. [more]
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