Books and Book Chapters

Managing agricultural enterprises and developing agricultural value chains: Cases on agribusinesses

This book of cases, mostly of small to medium organizations, from west Africa, Thailand and India offers cases suitable for training of practicing managers of small and medium agricultural enterprises and public sector professionals engaged in agricultural development. The book comprises an introductory essay, 22 cases, two industry notes, and a chapter guiding how the cases may be used to develop a one- or two-week training program. The cases are situations in enterprises or sectors that require a decision to be made, written from the perspective of a protagonist, usually a high-level decision maker. The cases included in the book are predominantly from West Africa—Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nigeria—and the rest are from India. In addition, two industry notes, one on tomato processing in Turkey and the other on the maize seed industry in Thailand are included. They offer contrasting situations to those addressed in some of the west African cases. Case-based teaching is particularly suitable for training of practicing managers with limited formal training. The cases in the book are adequate to comprehensively address key issues in agricultural enterprise management and value chain development.

Part of the book series: Management for Professionals (MANAGPROF)

Agricultural trade integration in ECOWAS

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional economic community (REC) composed of 15 member states and an associate country. Created in 1975 in Abuja, ECOWAS was established to pursue stability and regional integration in Africa and, over time, has expanded its mandate to include political dimensions. It is one of the largest RECs in Africa, covering a physical area of 5.1 million square kilometers with an estimated population of 424.3 million people as of 2022. The region’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was estimated at US$758 billion, which represents a quarter of Africa’s GDP (World Bank 2024). As the ECOWAS region pursues a process of structural transformation, the region’s economy has shifted toward industry and services, and the share of agriculture in GDP in ECOWAS countries has been declining, as in many developing countries (Laborde et al. 2018). However, the agriculture sector still represents 26 percent of GDP2 on average across the region, although with a high degree of heterogeneity: the share of agriculture in total GDP ranges from 5 percent in Cabo Verde to 60 percent in Sierra Leone. The REC is a heterogenous bloc that encompasses economic and demographic giants like Nigeria and small states like Cabo Verde and Gambia. It also includes landlocked countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger), members with access to the sea (Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone), and island states (Cabo Verde). ECOWAS is often cited as a successful example of regional integration in Africa. Indeed, since its beginning, the integration process has moved forward continuously with key successes such as the free movement of people, which has been in effect since 1979. Among the eight RECs recognized by the African Union, ECOWAS ranks fifth for trade integration and first in terms of the free movement of people, according to the Regional Integration Index built by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). However, when it comes to movement of goods, results are mixed, and serious challenges remain despite the formal processes of liberalization adopted by member states. The frictions affecting the free movement of goods are problematic, particularly for agricultural products, given that, in an environment marked by global crisis (notably the pandemic of COVID-19 in 2020 and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war), regional trade could mitigate the negative impacts and stabilize domestic markets. Furthermore, recent political tensions, marked by the intention of three member states (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) to withdraw from the organization, raise questions about the REC’s sustainability. This chapter assesses the level of agricultural trade integration in the ECOWAS area, progress made, and the challenges ahead. In the next section, we provide the historical background, reviewing early regional integration initiatives in Africa and the main steps in the construction of ECOWAS. The following section assesses trade costs within ECOWAS, including tariffs, nontariff measures, and logistics performance, with a special focus on costs arising from currency diversity as an impediment to trade. We then examine intraregional trade flows, including informal cross-border trade, which represents the bulk of these flows. Before concluding, the chapter presents key achievements and main challenges to greater integration.

Ultra-processed food environments: Aligning policy beliefs from the state, market, and civil society

Why is finding solutions to combat the increasing access to affordable ultra-processed foods so controversial and what strategies are necessary for policy change? Beyond the existing rational choice answers to this question, this chapter applies a political economy analysis of coalitions and policy beliefs in the ultra-processed food environment in a developing economy context. By combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework with the discourse analysis approach and factor analysis to a case study in Ghana, the chapter reveals a trichotomy of coalitions in the food environment, consisting of state, market, and civil society actors. The discourses reveal shared policy beliefs on the need for more regulation; independent beliefs on production incentives; and divergent beliefs on public awareness. The evidence highlights entry points for policy-oriented learning and policy change, including subsidies to support access to healthy foods, a prohibitive tax on ultra-processed foods, voluntary regulations, labelling and advertisement bans, and regulations.

The dynamics of Africa’s fruit and vegetable processing sectors

The production of fruits and vegetables (F&V) in Africa has increased 3.3 percent annually during the last 20 years, but only 0.7 percent in per capita terms (FAOSTAT 2022; Figure 3.1). Africa has the lowest per capita production and consumption of F&V in the world, although South Africa, Morocco, and Egypt are large producers and exporters.

A photographic food atlas with portion sizes of commonly consumed foods in Accra, Ghana

This Food Atlas provides a photograph series of 68 meals commonly consumed by adolescent girls in Accra, Ghana. It consists of pictures of four portion sizes per meal, including weights.

The main aim of this Food Atlas is to enable accurate portion-size estimation; during food consumption surveys, these images can be shown to respondents to aid them in describing the quantity of food consumed. The Food Atlas can also to aid in estimating, quantifying, educating, and counseling on appropriate portions of food in order to help improve dietary intake.

The meals were chosen using data collected during a previous study conducted at the Department of Nutrition, NMIMR, “Dietary Patterns and Cardio-metabolic Risk in Urban Dwelling Adolescents” (IRB Study Number 001/17-18), aimed at understanding the eating patterns, physical activity levels and their association with measures of adiposity, blood pressure, and fasting blood sugar among adolescents between ages 10 and 17.

All recipes were compiled with the aid of a professional caterer who had experience cooking for adolescents in a school setting.

An evolving paradigm for Africa and synthesis of the lessons from Asia

Africa has experienced a paradigm shift in mechanization in the past three decades. The “new paradigm” has also given rise to new challenges and policy issues. By synthesizing the recent experiences in African and Asian countries, this chapter draws lessons from Asia and Africa under this new African paradigm. In doing so, the chapter first lays out the guiding theoretical framework used in 1987 by Pingali, Bigot, and Binswanger (PBB), based on the literature on farming systems evolution and induced technological change. The chapter then describes the “new paradigm,” which builds on PBB but also integrates the additional dimension of market failures associated, on the supply side, with custom hiring services, which have become the most common mode of mechanization among smallholders in developing countries. Applying this expanded framework, the chapter then reviews the Asian experience first. It highlights how mechanization has grown in the continent, having largely avoided supply-side market failures, thanks to several factors: smaller machine sizes;1 increased opportunities for multifunctional uses of machines; more secure land tenures that allow integration with formal credit markets; and the supportive, rather than distortive, nature of government subsidy policies. The chapter then turns to the experiences in Africa south of the Sahara (“Africa” hereafter) and highlights the emerging patterns of spatial variations in demand that are still largely consistent with the PBB framework. However, the chapter also stresses that market failures associated with custom hiring services on the supply side are substantial due to features unique to Africa, including the dominant types of large tractors, in addition to higher financial constraints on tractor ownership resulting from lack of secure land tenures and weak penetration of formal credit markets, as well as other barriers due to limited multifunctionality, lack of migratory services due to insufficient infrastructure and coordination failures, and insufficient technologies complementary to mechanization. Based on country experiences in Asia and Africa, the chapter also highlights key government policies that have not always been successful, including import restrictions (or removal thereof), inefficient technology and skill promotion, and insufficient provision of public goods. Last, given the country experiences and the identified appropriate roles of governments, the chapter concludes by describing the key lessons that are important for Africa’s mechanization pathway forward, including (1) understanding the emerging nature of demand, (2) actively promoting private hiring services, (3) eliminating or reducing distortions, and (4) prioritizing the mechanization technologies appropriate for African contexts.

Agricultural mechanization in Ghana: Alternative supply models for tractor hiring services

As in most countries in Africa, agricultural mechanization in Ghana was slow to develop until the 1990s; however, this has changed markedly since the early 2000s. According to the nationally representative Labor Force Survey conducted in 2015/2016, about one third of Ghana’s crop-growing farmers, including smallholders, reported using some form of machinery, mostly tractors for land preparation. Still, policymakers are concerned that mechanization should be proceeding at a faster rate and worry that supply-side issues may be constraining its uptake, especially among smallholders. With this in mind, the government recently started to directly re-engage the promotion of mechanization, devoting public resources to directly subsidize machinery imports and to establish a network of subsidized agricultural mechanization service centers around the country (Diao et al. 2014). Parallel with these government programs is the rapid development of private-sector supply systems, through which an increased number of secondhand tractors were imported and purchased by relatively large-scale farmers. In turn, these farmers provide hiring services to smaller-scale farmers for use mainly in land preparation, harvesting, and threshing. In this chapter, we review recent developments in the uptake of agricultural mechanization in Ghana and the factors driving the growth in farmers’ demand. We then discuss alternative supply models in the country, comparing them with recent government interventions. This leads to our conclusions about appropriate mechanization policies for the future.

Policies for competitive and sustainable agricultural production systems: A case study of Ghana’s recent mechanization interventions

This chapter highlights the emerging areas of market failure associated with agricultural mechanization and how SSA governments, including the Ghanaian government, have adapted their strategies over the years in attempting to overcome these market failures. The chapter focuses more on Ghana, rather than SSA as a whole, while also discussing how Ghana’s experiences are still relevant to other SSA countries. To retain clarity on the policy dynamics aspects, the chapter limits its focus to tractors in the crop subsector, as well as mechanization-specific policies, while leaving other types of mechanization technologies or subsectors, or other broader mechanization-sensitive interventions and policies, to future studies.

Using mobile-phone technology to change behaviour: Lessons from mNutrition

This article presents key lessons learned from a rigorous mixed-method evaluation of mNutrition, a global mobile phone-based advisory service that promotes behavioural change around key nutrition and farming practices to boost the nutritional health of children and adults in low-income countries. The evaluation found that the reach and sustained uptake of mobile mNutrition services remain a challenge among very poor households, with women often being excluded. mNutrition services currently have limited effect on nutrition and agriculture behaviours at scale, although active users (those users who adopted and engaged with the service) report some behavioural change. Still, well-designed mNutrition services can provide individually tailored, practical and context-specific advice that is often lacking from other information sources. Mobile phone-based advisory services alone tend to be insufficient to ensure uptake, engagement and behavioural change. In-person support features may help, but also raise the cost of the service.

An evolving paradigm of agricultural mechanization development: How much can Africa learn from Asia?

Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.

This record also includes the following synopsis:
Diao, Xinshen; Takeshima, Hiroyuki; and Zhang, Xiaobo, eds. 2020. An evolving paradigm of agricultural mechanization development: How much can Africa learn from Asia? Synopsis. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896293823

Cities and rural transformation: A spatial analysis of rural youth livelihoods in Ghana

Chapter 7 reflects Ghana’s later stage of development by focusing on the link between urban development and the livelihoods available to rural youth living close to cities or towns.

Ghana’s economic and agricultural transformation: Past performance and future prospects

Ghana’s Economic and Agricultural Transformation: Past Performance and Future Prospects explores the challenges and opportunities of Africa’s transformation through an integrated economic and political analysis. Using Ghana as a case study, a wide range of primary and secondary data used to look at the potential of urbanization, the role of public investments, government support for value chain development, and government commitment to agriculture sector transformation. Agriculture offers real options for transformation, and this book examines the viability of those options given political-economy constraints, past investment decisions, and the broader global environment in which Ghana, and Africa, must now compete.

This record also includes the synopsis:
Diao, Xinshen; Hazell, Peter B.R.; Kolavalli, Shashidhara; and Resnick, Danielle. 2019. Ghana’s economic and agricultural transformation: Past performance and future prospects: Synopsis. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896296862

Introduction [in Ghana’s economic and agricultural transformation]

Why have African economies developed in this way and why has industrialization been so difficult to achieve? And if industrialization is going to be difficult to achieve for African countries, what viable policy options exist to generate sustainable structural transformations in the region? To tackle these important questions in a tractable manner, this book focuses on the experience of one country—Ghana—and examines the country’s overall economic performance since it went through a major Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in the early 1980s and provides a detailed analysis of the performance of the agricultural sector. In so doing, the book aims to explain why Ghana has not transformed its economy more substantially, why its agriculture sector— beyond cocoa—has not played a greater role, and what it must do in the future if it is to continue with a successful transformation. Addressing these puzzles requires integrating economic and political analyses. Finally, the book considers what the rest of Africa can learn from Ghana’s experience.

Strong democracy, weak state: The political economy of Ghana’s stalled structural transformation

This chapter has shown that Ghana’s reputation for upholding political rights and civil liberties since the country’s democratic transition in 1992 is well deserved. As Africa’s only institutionalized two-party system, competitive elections have enforced a commitment to the poor and a broad swathe of voters, evidenced by an impressive national health insurance scheme and an extensive social transfer program. Resources also have been heavily invested in health and education, resulting in substantial improvements in social outcomes. Foreign direct investment is attracted by the country’s political stability and openness. Compared to the country’s years of political instability prior to the 1980s, when ideological differences resulted in high levels of policy volatility, substantive partisan differences between the NDC and NPP have narrowed on key issues. As Throup et al. (2014: 155) note with respect to agriculture, there is now a bi-partisan consensus on key policies: “the peasantry must be encouraged, nontraditional crops must be promoted, development must be brought to the North [through the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority], and investment on infrastructure should be prioritized.”

Urbanization and its impact on Ghana’s rural transformation

The chapter addresses three broad questions. First, are patterns of rural employment in Ghana changing with urbanization and are those changes related in any systematic way with proximity to urban centers of different sizes? Second, does proximity to different-sized urban centers have any impact on patterns of agricultural intensification? Finally, what are the impacts on household livelihoods and welfare outcomes? To answer these questions the analysis goes beyond the usual agroecological breakdown (Chapter 4) and uses a spatial typology of rural areas based on work by Berdegue et al. (2015) and others in Latin America.

Ghana’s agricultural transformation: Past patterns and sources of change

The future sustainability of the current patterns of agricultural growth is constrained by the availability of remaining virgin and fallow land for future expansion of the cropped area. As the land frontier runs out, farmers will need to shift towards more intensive modes of production, and options will need to include higher-yielding technologies and a greater focus on high-value products. The economic viability of these options will depend on government policies towards agricultural R&D, infrastructure, and value chain interventions that condition access to modern inputs and urban markets and their costs, and trade policies that condition the level of competition farmers must face in their domestic markets. These policies will need to be cognizant of the needs of the changing nature of Ghanaian agriculture. As more small farm households are attracted into nonfarm activities, farms become more consolidated, rural wages rise, and rural youth become better educated, more emphasis will be needed on the development of technologies and commercial farming practices that raise land as well as labor productivity, are attractive to young farmers, and meet the needs of Ghana’s increasingly urbanized food system.

Agricultural transformation in the savannah: Perspectives from the village

Most of the evidence presented in this book about changes in the agricultural sector draws on secondary data and nationally representative household surveys like the GLSS. This chapter seeks to ground the truth of some of the key findings by providing village and farmer perspectives on important changes that have impacted on their livelihoods since the 1980s, and how they have adapted their farming systems and practices. The chapter also addresses several key questions. What were the key factors driving farmers’ adaptation decisions, including the roles of changes in population density and the availability of additional land for cultivation, improved access to markets, changing market demands, increased competition for labor from the rural nonfarm economy, and higher wages? Why, despite continuing rural population growth, have farmers generally chosen to adopt technologies and farming practices that increase labor productivity relative to land productivity? Finally, what happens once options for bringing more land into production become exhausted?

Unleashing the power of mechanization

As in most of Africa, agricultural mechanization in Ghana has been slow to develop, either in the form of animal or tractor power. But this has changed markedly since the early 2000s, and today about one third of all Ghana’s farmers report using some form of mechanization, mostly tractors for land preparation, as do over half the farmers with five or more hectares of cropped land. However, policymakers often are skeptical of the role played by the private sector in providing mechanization services and worry that supplyside issues may be constraining its uptake, especially amongst smaller-sized farms. With this in mind, the government recently started to directly engage in the importation and subsidization of tractors, and has established a network of subsidized agricultural mechanization service centers around the country (Diao et al. 2014). The government program operates in direct competition with an already established private sector supply system, and this raises a number of important questions. In particular, is the government program overcoming some inherent market failure problems or is it introducing market distortions in machinery prices, encouraging rent-seeking behavior and possibly crowding out more efficient private suppliers? If the latter, then as suggested in Chapter 6, the program may be an unnecessary and costly addition to the financial burden of the public sector.

Public expenditure on agriculture and its impact

This chapter examines past patterns of public spending on agriculture in Ghana, and asks whether Ghana has invested enough resources in agriculture and how the patterns of investment in the sector have impacted agricultural productivity growth.

Developing agricultural value chains

This chapter examines and compares four important but different types of value chains in Ghana: two export crops—cocoa and pineapples, and two import-substitution crops—rice and tomatoes. Apart from cocoa, these crops have under-exploited opportunities, and we examine the opportunities and constraints along their value chains, and the roles that the public sector has or might need to play. This leads to some more general conclusions about the best ways to develop these and related agricultural value chains in Ghana.

Ghana’s economy-wide transformation: Past patterns and future prospects

Chapter 2 shows that the predominant source of labor productivity growth in Ghana has come from productivity increases within sectors, with the agricultural sector showing a particularly strong performance. Rodrik attributes this source of growth to what he calls “fundamental capabilities,” or the longer-term benefits from investments in better institutions, healthier and better educated workers, technologies, and more enabling policies. Another source of productivity growth arises from the movement of workers from low to higher productivity sectors, (e.g., from traditional agriculture to manufacturing). Rodrik calls this the gains from “structural change,” which result from changes in the relative importance of different sectors in national income and employment.

Future prospects

This final chapter pulls together the main findings of the book, highlights future challenges and opportunities for Ghana, and provides some guidance on the kinds of strategic changes that might help the country’s efforts towards more sustained structural change. It also concludes with some reflections on what the Ghanaian experience suggests for the rest of Africa.

The cocoa coast: The board-managed cocoa sector in Ghana

After almost 20 years of declining cocoa production, Ghana has been able in the last decade to increase the share of export prices going to producers and more than double production. Contrary to Washington Consensus prescriptions, these accomplishments were achieved through reforms that did not include market liberalization. In The Cocoa Coast: The Board-Managed Cocoa Sector in Ghana, the authors identify factors that have contributed to Ghana’s success in cocoa production. These include the accountability of the government for the sector’s performance (cocoa-sector performance being seen as a key dimension of economic management), its interest in maintaining the ability to raise funds globally as a reliable supplier of high-quality cocoa, and its policy of retaining a portion of producer revenues to promote the adoption of yield-enhancing measures. The authors also suggest how Ghana can improve the efficiency of the cocoa sector through measures such as increased transparency and curtailing services that would be better provided by the private sector. The Cocoa Coast will be a valuable resource for policy makers, development specialists, and others interested in different national development paths.

This record also includes the synopsis: Kolavalli, Shashidhara; and Vigneri, Marcella. 2017. The cocoa coast: The board-managed cocoa sector in Ghana: Synopsis. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896292703

Structural change, fundamentals, and growth: A framework and case studies

The volume consists of an overview and seven country studies, written by leading scholars from both developed and developing countries. The overview lays out a unifying framework for thinking about economic growth as a combination of two challenges. The “structural change challenge” is focused on moving resources from traditional low-productivity activities into modern, more productive industries. The “fundamentals challenge” faced by policy makers in the developing world is about how best to develop broad capabilities such as human capital and infrastructure. While the two are inextricably linked, they are conceptually different, and making this distinction is one of the contributions of this book. The overview also includes a description of the common methodology used in the country studies, a discussion of data and measurement issues, and a synthesis of the findings.

This volume is the outcome of a project funded by the World Bank Knowledge for Change Program.

Human and institutional capacity for climate resilient agriculture: Lessons from Bangladesh, Ghana, India and Vietnam

Structural change in a poor African country: New historical evidence from Ghana

Each country has its own story of how it developed, but at the regional level, some stark patterns stand out. For Asia, the development path was rather traditional, with the decline of agriculture and the rise of manufacturing (that is, industrialization) and services. In fact, it is the path that eight high-performing Asian economies followed between 1960 and 1990 to reach rapid, sustained, and inclusive growth rates—higher than those of all other regions—earning the title the “East Asian miracle.” But for Africa, the development path has been quite different. It, too, saw a decline in agriculture, but it still lacks a vibrant manufacturing sector. There is reason to believe that a major culprit is insufficient growth in labor productivity, which is composed of a “within” component (changes in productivity within a sector) and a “structural change component” (changes in productivity resulting from labor movements across sectors). To shed more light on the African story, a good case study is Ghana. It is one of a handful of countries in Africa that has sufficient data on sectoral productivity and employment over a long period. But it is also a fascinating case of structural change in a poor African country for a variety of reasons.

Economic development and nutrition transition in Ghana: Taking stock of food consumption patterns and trends

Along with high economic growth over a period of somewhat more than the past three decades, poverty, household food insecurity, and undernutrition have substantially declined in Ghana. Ghana was one of the first African countries that achieved the first MDG, that of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Recently, Ghana achieved (lower-) middle-income-country status. Economic growth has been accompanied by a structural transformation of the economy and progressing urbanization. Household income growth improves people’s ability to afford nutritious foods and diversified diets, and allows them to utilize superior healthcare and higher education, contributing to healthier and more productive lives for themselves and their children. However, improvements in people’s living standards and changes in their livelihood activities and lifestyle usually also lead to a nutrition transition and give rise to new nutritional challenges, including increasing prevalence of overweight/obesity and related NCDs. To successfully address these new nutritional challenges, governments may need to launch new health and nutrition programs and revisit established food policies that have become inefficient in reducing food insecurity and malnutrition or even detrimental under the new circumstances.

Factors influencing the effectiveness of productivity-enhancing interventions: an assessment of selected programs

The preceding chapter has shown that agricultural intensification paths differ markedly in different farming systems and are influenced significantly by population density; yield-enhancing technologies, such as fertilizer, may have been used more as instruments for expanding cultivated area, rather than for increasing yield; and further in-country analysis is needed to sharpen the policy implications of these findings. This chapter assesses selected productivity-enhancing interventions across Africa, with the aim of distilling lessons on key factors contributing to the effectiveness of such interventions. Intervention as used here stands for programs, projects, strategies, or other agricultural development initiatives, and effectiveness refers to the extent to which the objectives of the intervention were achieved, taking into account their relative importance (OECD 2010).

Democratization in Africa: What role for external actors?

Democratic trajectories in Africa: Unravelling the impact of foreign aid

Introduction: Why aid and democracy?: Why Africa?

West African agriculture and climate change: A comprehensive analysis

This book examins the food security threats facing 11 of the countries that make up West Africa - Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo - and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. West Africa's population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth. Both will put increased pressure on the natural resources needed to produce food, and climate change makes the challenges greater.

Ghana

Including inland water bodies, Ghana covers 238,539 square kilometers and is located on the south central coast of West Africa. The country shares bor¬ders in the east with Togo, in the north with Burkina Faso, and in the west with Côte d’Ivoire. The topography of Ghana is mainly undulating, with most slopes less than 5 percent and many not exceeding 1 percent. The topography of the high rainforest is, however, mainly strongly rolling. The uplifted edges of the Voltarian basin give rise to narrow plateaus between 300 and 600 meters in elevation (Boateng 1998). Moving from the rainforest zone in the south to the Sahara Desert in the north, rainfall generally decreases and temperature increases. Rainfall is the most important climatic factor influencing vegetation in Ghana. The wettest area is in the extreme southwest, where the rainfall is over 2,000 millimeters per year. In the extreme north, the annual rainfall is less than 1,100 millimeters. The driest area is at the southeastern coastal tip, where the rainfall is about 750 millimeters. Much of the rain falls in intense storms of short duration, especially at the beginning of the season, resulting in heavy runoff and erosion. The annual mean relative humidity is about 80 percent in the south and 44 percent in the north (Dickson and Benneh 1988). The mean monthly temperature for the entire country is 25°C. Although temperatures are uniformly moderate, there are important variations over different parts of the country, reflecting altitude and distance from the sea.

Democratic trajectories in Africa: Conclusions and policy recommendations

Overview [in West African Agriculture and Climate Change]

This chapter provides an overview of the region, its current economic situ¬ation, and its vulnerability to climate change. It is designed to provide useful input into the efforts of ECOWAS in developing appropriate policies related to climate for the region. This chapter is followed by one that describes the common methodologies used by the authors of all country chapters and then by the individual country chapters. The monograph ends with a chapter that draws lessons for the region from the individual country studies.

Strategies and priorities for African agriculture: Economywide perspectives from country studies

This book examines the potential of agriculture to contribute to national growth and poverty reduction. It also evaluates the financial costs of accelerating agricultural growth. The analysis is based on ten country case studies that apply similar economywide approaches to linking growth, poverty, and investment. The findings indicate that, in most African countries, improving agriculture’s performance is essential to achieving pro-poor growth. They also point to export agriculture having high growth potential and becoming a prominent part of agricultural strategies. The research shows that broad-based growth will be difficult to achieve without expanding staple-foodcrop production and livestock production, since only they have the scale and linkages to poor households needed to reduce national poverty within a reasonable period of time. Finally, the case studies confirm the need for greater investment in agriculture. However, the efficiency of agricultural investments will have to improve if development targets are to remain attainable.

Public expenditures and agricultural productivity growth in Ghana

Ghana

Ghana has experienced persistent growth with a record of positive per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past 26 years. As a result, the country is bound to become the first Sub-Saharan African country to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) of halving poverty and hunger ahead of the target year 2015. Underlying this success are the country’s significant efforts to build institutions and state capacity. Ghana has become a stable democratic state, as demonstrated in a peaceful transition of power in two consecutive free and fair elections in 2000 and 2008. Governance indicators have been steadily improving over the past years, and in 2007 Ghana ranked ahead of regional averages of Asia, Latin America, and Africa in most important governance indicators, including government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and control of corruption (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2009). The country is ranked among the top 10 African countries in terms of freedom of the press and academic freedom (Freedom House 2008).

Simulating the impact of the global economic crisis and policy responses on children in West and Central Africa

In Children in crisis: Seeking child-sensitive policy responses, ed. Caroline Harper, Nicola Jones, Ronald U. Mendoza, David Stewart; and Erika Strand. Part II Emerging evidence on the impact of the 2008–10 crises. Chapter 5. Pp. 75-92.

A new era of transformation in Ghana: Lessons from the past and scenarios for the future

Several Sub-Saharan African nations have experienced increased economic growth and political stability in recent years compared with the stagnation and turmoil of previous decades. Ghana is one of the biggest success stories of the region; the nation has enjoyed an annual average of five percent economic growth for the past 20 years and will probably be the first Sub-Saharan African country to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015.

Gender and governance in rural services: Insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia

As the first output from the gender and governance in rural services project, this report presents descriptive findings and qualitative analysis of accountability mechanisms in agricultural extension and rural water supply in India, Ghana, and Ethiopia, paying specific attention to gender responsiveness. The gender and governance in rural services project seeks to generate policy-relevant knowledge on strategies to improve agricultural and rural service delivery, with a focus on providing more equitable access to these services, especially for women. The project focuses on agricultural extension, as an example of an agricultural service, and drinking water, as an example of rural service that is not directly related to agriculture but is of high relevance for rural women. A main goal of this project was to generate empirical micro level evidence about the ways various accountability mechanisms for agricultural and rural service provision work in practice and to identify factors that influence the suitability of different governance reform strategies that aim to make service provision more gender responsive. Three out of four poor people in the developing world live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Providing economic services, such as agricultural extension, is essential to using agriculture for development. At the same time, the rural poor need a range of basic services, such as drinking water, education, and health services. Such services are difficult to provide in rural areas because they are subject to the "triple challenge" of market, state, and community failure. As a result of market failure, the private sector does not provide these services to the rural poor to the extent that is desirable from society's point of view. The state is not very effective in providing these services either, because these services have to be provided every day throughout the country, even in remote areas, and because they require discretion and cannot easily be standardized, especially if they are demand driven. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and communities themselves are interesting alternative providers of these services, but they too can fail, because of capacity constraints and local elite capture. This triple challenge of market, state, and community failure results in the poor provision of agricultural and rural services, a major obstacle to agricultural and rural development.

Towards functional biosafety regulatory frameworks in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Malawi

Women's land rights in the transition to individualized ownership: implications or tree resources in Western Ghana

This study explores the impact of changes in land tenure institutions on women’s land rights and the efficiency of tree resource management in western Ghana, where cocoa is the dominant crop. Although communal land tenure aims to provide equitable access to land for all households, women’s land rights in the region are weaker than those of men, as is often the case under customary land tenure systems (Lastarria-Cornhiel 1997). If women are blocked from having secure land rights, and therefore from individualized investment in land, the resulting barrier to increased productivity will diminish their incentives to sustain resource use over time (Meinzen-Dick et al. 1997).

Household decisions, gender, and development: a synthesis of recent research

This book synthesizes IFPRI's recent work on the role of gender in household decisionmaking in developing countries, provides evidence on how reducing gender gaps can contribute to improved food security, health, and nutrition in developing countries, and gives examples of interventions that actually work to reduce gender disparities. It is an accessible, easy-to-read synthesis of the gender research that IFPRI has undertaken in the 1990s.

Livelihoods in the city: challenges and options for the urban poor

Land rights and natural resource management in the transition to individual ownership: case studies from Ghana and Indonesia

Agroforestry management in Ghana

Measuring nutritional dimensions of household food security: Technical guide: strengthening the household food security and nutritional aspects of IFAD poverty alleviation projects: developing operational methodologies for project design and monitoring

This guide outlines methodologies that will assist practitioners to improve the nutrition impact of development activities. The methodologies described here are jointly referred to as nutritional assessment. The guide begins by explaining what is meant by nutritional assessment, and how it can reinforce linkages between nutrition and agricultural development. The guide then considers how nutritional assessment can be used in rural development projects for beneficiary targeting and project formulation, as well as for practical project monitoring and evaluation. It is concluded that nutritional assessment has great potential for geographical targeting at little additional cost, and is also a useful input into project formulation. It is invaluable at the monitoring and evaluation stage because it offers the possibility of directly measuring the human welfare impact of development activities, and also because the information generated can only with some difficulty be manipulated by interested parties. In the final section of the guide, the preceding theoretical discussions are illustrated using data from Honduras and Northern Ghana.