IFPRI Publications on Ghana

× Diet-related risks cause 20% of global deaths (~11 million) per year (Afshin et al., 2019). Increased urbanization in low- and middle-income countries accompanied by a nutrition transition, involving increased consumption of unhealthy, processed foods and reductions in physical activity, has exacerbated diet-related risks, leading to increases in rates of overweight and obesity (Popkin et al., 2020). Diets in urban settings are also affected by the reduced time for food preparation, convenience and affordability of unhealthy foods.
We developed an artificial-intelligence-based phone application called Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI) to tackle these problems. FRANI was previously validated against observed weighed records, the gold standard for diet assessment, and shown to be as accurate as a trained dietician undertaking a standard, multi-pass 24-hr recall (Folson et al., 2023). FRANI was developed to also provide gamified nudges and personalized feedback designed to promote healthy food choices. The objectives of this study were to measure the acceptability, adherence, and likeability of FRANI, as well as its effects on the food choices of female youth in Accra, Ghana.

× This report summarizes lessons from cross-country analyses of the impact of the Africa RISING (AR) program. Implemented in six countries—Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Mali, and Ghana—AR aimed to provide pathways out of hunger and poverty for smallholders by sustainably intensifying their farming systems in order to enhance income and food security, particularly for women and children, while conserving or enhancing the natural resource base. Phase I (2012–2016) focused on the validation of demand-driven sustainable intensification (SI) innovations, while Phase II (2016–2022) focused on the scaling of a subset of validated SI innovations in partnership with development partners.

× Sustainable intensification (SI) of the smallholder sector in Africa south of the Sahara is among the approaches pursued to build resilient food systems that can supply nutritionally adequate food in the face of rapid population growth and climatic changes. This study assesses the impact of Africa RISING, an SI program in Ghana implemented in the poorest and most food insecure areas of the country since 2012. The program first validated and then scaled up a wide range of SI interventions focused on improved agronomic management and crop cultivars; improved livestock feed, housing conditions, and species; crop-livestock integration; integrated natural resource management; vegetable production and nutritional education; and small-scale mechanization. Impact is estimated using two rounds of quasi-experimental panel data (conducted in 2014 and 2020), propensity score matching, and difference-indifferences techniques. The study design allows us to estimate the impact of Africa RISING by comparing outcomes among program beneficiaries with those of two different control groups—one residing in program villages (within village comparison) and another in non-program (control) villages (out-of-village comparison) on several indicators across five SI domains—environment, productivity, economic, human, and social. We also conduct a placebo test comparing non-beneficiaries in the two control groups. Results from panel data analyses show improvements in several indicators in the environmental and productivity domains. We also find a positive impact on use of conservation practices (fallowing, disc/moldboard ploughing, manure), groundnut yield, livestock, net crop income, and women’s likelihood of becoming members of farmers groups relative to non-beneficiaries. We do not find a statistically significant effect on consumption- and asset-based poverty rates, household dietary diversity, and several indicators of maternal and child nutrition. For both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, the share of monetary-based non-poor, dietary diversity, and food security have declined between baseline (2014) and follow-up (2020) likely due COVID-19. Our study highlights useful empirical lessons learned for informing future program design and impact assessments.

× The Africa RISING project in Ghana was implemented in 25 communities across the Upper East, Upper West, and Northern regions. The project supported the promotion of early maturing maize varieties and maize-cowpea intercropping, optimal crop spacing for increased groundnut yield, and maize-leaf stripping for livestock feed. It also aimed to foster the adoption of improved feeding for livestock to boost manure production, reduce animal mortality, and increase animal reproduction rates. Alongside these interventions, Africa RISING promoted effective natural resource management (leaf stripping, manure production, and use of nitrogen fertilizer). Mechanization for postharvest handling was also supported, especially the use of fuel-powered maize-shelling machines.

× There is growing recognition that water insecurity – the inability to reliably access sufficient water for all household uses – is commonly experienced globally and has myriad adverse consequences for human well-being. The role of water insecurity in food insecurity and diet quality, however, has received minimal attention. Data are from panel surveys conducted during 2020–21 among adults involved in smallholder agriculture in Niger (n = 364, 3 rounds), Nigeria (n = 501, 5 rounds), Senegal (n = 501, 5 rounds), and Ghana (n = 543, 5 rounds). We hypothesized that household water insecurity (measured using the brief Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale) would be associated with greater individual food insecurity (using 5 of the 8 Food Insecurity Experiences Scale items) and lower dietary diversity (using the Minimum Dietary Diversity Score for Women). At baseline, 37.1% of individuals were living in water-insecure households and of these, 90.6% had some experience of food insecurity. In multilevel mixed-effects regressions, individuals living in water-insecure households had 1.67 (95% CI: 1.47, 1.89) times higher odds of reporting any food insecurity experience and were estimated to consume 0.38-fewer food groups (95% CI: -0.50, -0.27) than those living in water-secure households. Experiences with suboptimal water access and use are associated with poor nutrition. The pathways by which water insecurity impacts nutrition should be identified. Global and national food and nutrition security policies could be strengthened by monitoring and developing strategies to address household water insecurity.

× We analyze rural households’ purchases of food (cereals and non-cereals) in Sub-Saharan Africa using nationally representative data with 65,000 observations covering 7 countries over a decade. We distinguish between three strata of countries: lower stratum in income and urbanization, middle stratum, and upper stratum. The paper breaks ground by the breadth and time length of the sample. We find that purchases form the majority of rural food consumption whether in favorable or unfavorable agroecological zones and over country and income strata and for most food products. Rural nonfarm employment (as a cash source) plays an important role in household food purchases across all study countries and food products. Policy implications include the importance of food purchase markets and supply chains to and in rural areas as well as nonfarm employment.

× Seed systems are essential to bring good genetic material to farmers. Women farmers, however, have benefited less than men farmers from seed systems in low and middle income countries. We identify factors that inhibit and promote women's success in seed businesses through three case studies of women's and men's entrepreneurship across seed-related value chains and country contexts: tilapia seed production in Ghana, marketing and trading of improved maize and sorghum seeds in Kenya, and chicken seed dissemination in Tanzania. Applying a gender lens, we use key informant interviews and focus group discussions to analyze women's and men's motivations to engage in seed businesses, the challenges they confront to start and build their enterprises, and prospects for sustainability and continued success. We use quantitative data to characterize the levels of empowerment of the agripreneurs sampled. For women, the results show that the social normative context of the sector is critical. Time flexibility and profitability are important considerations for women's engagement. Furthermore, across all three country cases, family and external support are frequently key to women's participation and success in seed agripreneurship. The article discusses the importance of government bodies, NGOs, and donors in challenging the normative context around gender resource gaps, as well as provide technical packages and training to develop business acumen. Supporting change of restrictive gender norms in non-threatening ways - such as ICTs - is key.

× We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women's access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment.

× Background Gaps persist in the data on diets and on the validity of dietary assessment methods in youth in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to costs constraints. Although computer vision–assisted dietary assessment tools have been proposed, limited evidence exists on their validity in LMICs.

Objectives This study aimed to validate FRANI (Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights), a mobile phone application with computer vision–assisted dietary assessment, against weighed records (WRs) and compare with 24-h recalls (24HR), in female youth in Ghana.

Methods Dietary intake was assessed on 2 nonconsecutive days using FRANI, WR, and 24HR in females aged 18–24 y recruited at the University of Ghana, Accra (n = 64). Equivalence was examined by comparing intake mean ratios (FRANI/WR and 24HR/WR) with error margins of 10%, 15%, and 20%, using mixed-effect regression models adjusting for repeated measures. Agreement between methods was assessed using the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).

× We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women's access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment

× Transformation of the agri-food system (AFS) is a leading pathway to achieve the USG Global Food Security Strategy Objective 1 of “Inclusive agriculture-led growth”. The AFS encompasses the primary agricultural sector, as well as all upstream and downstream agriculture-related activities. An expansion of the AFS’s off-farm components is central to the process of agricultural transformation and is strongly associated with economic development. The Percent change in value-added in the agri-food system (AgGDP+) and Employment in the agri-food system (AgEMP+) indicators are useful to track this process.

× Ghana is home to 32 million people, 13 million of whom live in rural areas and work mostly in agriculture. Although substantial progress has been made, food insecurity still affects a large share of the population; during 2019–2021 more than one third of the population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, and in 2020 14% of children below the age of five were stunted.

× Ghana experienced rapid economic growth with an annual GDP growth rate of 6.6 percent between 2009 and 2019 (GSS 2023). Restrictive COVID-19 policy measures in 2020 caused a slowdown in growth (Amewu et al. 2020), with the rate falling to just 0.5 percent in that year (World Bank 2023a). Economic growth rebounded to 5.4 percent in 2021, but this growth was fueled by excessive government borrowing to finance an ambitious public infrastructure campaign and ushered in a severe financial crisis in Ghana. By 2022, the fiscal deficit had reached almost 10 percent of GDP and the total debt-to-GDP ratio had skyrocketed to 90 percent, resulting in rampant inflation (32 percent year-on year), a doubling of interest rates (from 14 to 28 percent), and a sharp currency depreciation (40 percent) (World Bank 2023b; Naadi 2023). Economic growth slowed to 3.2 percent in 2022 and is projected to decline further to 1.6 percent in 2023 (World Bank 2023a). Although President Akuffo-Addo blamed “malevolent forces” (Financial Times 2023)—including the global commodity market shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which by some accounts had only a minimal effect on Ghana’s economy (Arndt et al. 2023; Diao and Thurlow 2023)—the economic situation eventually forced the government to agree to an IMF bailout of US$3 billion in 2023. This will be in force for three years.

× The 2019 Ghana Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) follows IFPRI's Standard Nexus SAM approach, by focusing on consistency, comparability, and transparency of data. The Nexus SAMs available on IFPRI's website separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital, with labor further disaggregated across three education-based categories. The household account is divided into 10 representative household groups: Rural and urban households across per capita consumption quintiles. Nexus SAMs support the improvement of model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries and allow for more robust cross-country comparisons of national economic structures, especially agriculture-food systems.

× Why is finding solutions to combat the increasing access to affordable ultra-processed foods so controversial and what strategies are necessary for policy change? To address this question, this chapter applies a political economy analysis of coalitions and policy beliefs in the ultra-processed food environment in Ghana. By combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework with the discourse analysis approach and factor analysis, 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 among these coalitions 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, labeling and advertisement bans, and regulatory instruments.

× Recent estimates suggest that diet related risk factors cause 11 million deaths every year, more than any other factor included in the Global Burden of Disease analyses. These risks have been exacerbated by trends associated with the “nutrition transition,” including increased consumption of unhealthy, processed foods and reductions in physical activity, leading to increases in rates of overweight and obesity. Up-to-date dietary intake data are essential for the development of evidence-based nutrition actions. However, dietary data collection and analysis is complex and expensive. Dietary assessment surveys commonly use the multi pass 24-hour recall (24HR) method that has been validated for use in adults self-reporting their intake and/or that of their young children, and in adolescents. The costs of undertaking a 24HR are of the order of $500 per recall.

× There is limited experimental evidence on the effects of large-scale, government-led interventions on human capital in resource-constrained settings. We report results from a randomized trial of the government of Ghana’s school feeding. After two years, the program led to moderate average increases in math and literacy standardized scores among pupils in treatment communities, and to larger achievement gains for girls and disadvantaged children and regions. Improvements in child schooling, cognition, and nutrition constituted suggestive impact mechanisms, especially for educationally-disadvantaged groups. The program combined equitable human capital accumulation with social protection, contributing to the “learning for all” sustainable development agenda.

× Given persistent gender inequalities that influence how the benefits of technologies are distributed, the expansion of small-scale irrigation technologies requires the consideration of important gender dynamics and impacts. Women's lack of agency and access to resources relative to men, and other social constraints, often limit their ability to adopt and benefit from agricultural technologies. At the same time, expanding access to agricultural technology to women may provide a pathway for empowerment. This paper explores the potential for small-scale irrigation technologies to increase women's empowerment by evaluating the impacts of an intervention that distributed motor pumps to small groups of farmers in Northern Ghana. The paper draws on two rounds of survey data that included the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, before and after the motor pump intervention was implemented. To control for possible selection bias at the baseline, the difference-in-difference method is used to estimate the impact of the program on indicators of women's empowerment. Spillover effects are estimated by comparing outcomes of farmers in treatment villages that did not receive the pumps with farmers in control villages, where no motor pumps were distributed. The results show no significant impact of the program on measures of women's empowerment. However, there are potential negative impacts, including among households that did not benefit from the intervention. The results highlight the need to pair interventions that distribute agricultural technologies with complementary investments in infrastructure that increase access to water for irrigation, as well as other activities and approaches that ensure women can reap the benefits.

× This study assesses the institutions and economics of public investments in three agricultural water management infrastructure and technologies: rehabilitation of small reservoirs, fuel-powered motorized small pumps and electricity-powered large pumps. We find that all three technologies yield positive returns on investment, but their applicability varies spatially and across community due to differences in capital costs and environmental feasibilities or conditions. Sensitivity analyses indicate the base decision parameters – net present value, benefit–cost ratio and internal rate of return – remain stable despite potential changes in the flow of future benefits or costs. This provides further evidence about the worthiness of investment in irrigation infrastructure and technologies. However, significant under-utilized infrastructural capacities exist that warrant complementary investment in human and institutional capacities. Based on the findings policy recommendations are provided.

× Despite the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and human health, they are a key ingredient in boosting agricultural productivity as a way of meeting global food demand. While global levels of pesticides are towering in high-income countries, pesticide use in many parts of Africa remains low, with significant impacts on agricultural productivity and food production. We use a rich longitudinal dataset to examine the relationship between farmer advisory systems and pesticide use in legume-based production systems in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. We find that farmers who are advised by private extension systems are approximately 8 % more likely to use pesticides at an extensive level. They also use pesticides more intensively (41 %). On the other hand, farmers advised by public extension systems are about 5 % more likely to extensively use pesticides. These farmers are observed to reduce the intensive use of pesticides by about 14 %. Furthermore, we also show that farmers advised by joint private-public extension systems are about 4 % more likely to use pesticides as well as reduce their intensity of use by approximately 11 %. At the various country levels, there exists significant heterogeneity in the relationship between advisory systems and pesticide use, suggesting that context matters. Of course, the pesticide regulatory systems and the institutional environments in these countries vary greatly. Given these findings, our study offers key entry and leveraging points for increasing pesticide use at levels that limit their environmental and human effects but may ascertain increased agricultural productivity and food production.

× Farmers, entrepreneurs, and businesses are already leading the way by expanding irrigation in response to climate variability and the growing demand for vegetables and fruit through supplemental and dry-season irrigated production. Increasing commercialization creates market opportunities throughout irrigated value chains. The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), has supported research and partnerships with companies and producer groups to innovate technologies, share information, and develop inclusive, market-based approaches that catalyze investment in irrigation.

× Evidence indicates that cash transfers can decrease intimate partner violence (IPV) against women, although most research has focused on women's perspectives and experiences, with less attention to men. We analyzed data from four focus group discussions with male partners of women who participated in the Ghana Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) 1000 cash transfer program. We elicited men's perceptions of poverty, relationship dynamics, IPV and cash transfers targeted to their wives using thematic analysis. Men largely viewed the effects of the cash transfer as positive – they felt decreased provider role strain when women used the cash to cover household expenses such as food and school fees. Men also indicated that they felt respected when women used the cash to cover sudden expenses, such as funeral costs, thus preventing the need to borrow from community members and exposing their inability to fulfill provider roles. These feelings of relief and respect helped improve men's overall wellbeing, their marital relationships and reduced the potential for IPV. Despite these positive results, men revealed that they still expected to be informed and consulted about the transfer and its expenditure, and felt disrespected when women did not do so, thus heightening the potential for household conflict. Further research and innovation in programming is needed to integrate gender transformative strategies into cash transfer programs, explicitly aimed at changing gender norms to enhance and sustain beneficial impacts on gender relations and IPV.

× Individual farmer investments have the potential to fill the gap in public investments and be more cost-effective than large-scale irrigation. However, this development primarily occurs outside of formal systems. Water depletion and declining water quality in some areas of Africa and Southeast Asia suggest the need for careful planning and monitoring of small-scale irrigation to support resilience and avoid maladaptation. ILSSI research partners sought to support decision-makers to understand where and how water can be sustainably used by small-scale irrigators, employing and strengthening capacity for tools to manage competing demands and mitigate the risks to water security. Research partnerships also guided organizations and companies to deploy solar irrigation technologies based on biophysical and socio-economic suitability. Working with farmers, water users, and extension services, the project aimed to improve on-farming water management practices and engage communities to help safeguard water resources.

× Introducing small-scale irrigation can bring opportunities for empowerment and exclusion. To support equity and inclusion, projects must go beyond technology access alone. Situated outside formal public programs, companies and organizations must design market or public interventions to reach women through their preferred information sources, offer technologies suitable for multiple purposes, provide relevant financial tools and credit products, and facilitate market linkages and household cooperation that can help women turn a profit from irrigation. Opportunities for women in irrigated production and value chains can significantly increase the overall number of people adopting and benefitting from small-scale irrigation.

× The evidence on the potential for agricultural interventions to contribute to improved nutrition has grown considerably over the past decade. Numerous studies have explored both positive and negative effects of agriculture on nutrition and health. The Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation has helped to fill the evidence gap on small-scale irrigation and nutrition linkages. The studies, implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute and national partners, examine the potential of smallscale irrigation as a nutrition-sensitive investment. Through this work, more development partners are recognizing the interconnections and beginning to design irrigation investments to intentionally improve nutritional and health outcomes.

× This paper examines how resilience capacity mediates or moderates the relationship between weather shocks and household food security based on two waves of farm household survey and satellite-based weather data in northern Ghana and applying econometric models. Results show that resilience capacity moderate or mediates the negative effects of heat stress and drought on food security. However, the mediating role of resilience capacity in the shock-food security nexus is more stable and stronger than its moderating role. A standard deviation (SD) increase in heat stress reduces household food consumption by 0.71 SD, but resilience capacity effectively moderates this effect by approximately 0.61 SD. For drought, household food consumption is reduced by 0.67 SD, but resilience capacity effectively dampens this negative effect by approximately 0.60 SD. The mediation results, on the other hand, indicate that 537% of the total effect of heat stress on household calorie consumption is explained by the indirect effect through resilience capacity. Similarly, resilience capacity mediates about 74% of the total effect of heat stress on household food consumption. These results suggest that strategies that help improve resilience capacity, such as the adoption of sustainable intensification practices, are critical in enhancing food security in northern Ghana.

× Background
Important gaps exist in the dietary intake of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), partly due to expensive assessment methods and inaccuracy in portion-size estimation. Dietary assessment tools leveraging mobile technologies exist but only a few have been validated in LMICs.

Objective
We validated Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI), a mobile artificial intelligence (AI) dietary assessment application in adolescent females aged 12–18 y (n = 36) in Ghana, against weighed records (WR), and multipass 24-hour recalls (24HR).

Methods
Dietary intake was assessed during 3 nonconsecutive days using FRANI, WRs, and 24HRs. Equivalence of nutrient intake was tested using mixed-effect models adjusted for repeated measures, by comparing ratios (FRANI/WR and 24HR/WR) with equivalence margins at 10%, 15%, and 20% error bounds. Agreement between methods was assessed using the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).

Results
Equivalence for FRANI and WR was determined at the 10% bound for energy intake, 15% for 5 nutrients (iron, zinc, folate, niacin, and vitamin B6), and 20% for protein, calcium, riboflavin, and thiamine intakes. Comparisons between 24HR and WR estimated equivalence at the 20% bound for energy, carbohydrate, fiber, calcium, thiamine, and vitamin A intakes. The CCCs by nutrient between FRANI and WR ranged between 0.30 and 0.68, which was similar for CCC between 24HR and WR (ranging between 0.38 and 0.67). Comparisons of food consumption episodes from FRANI and WR found 31% omission and 16% intrusion errors. Omission and intrusion errors were lower when comparing 24HR with WR (21% and 13%, respectively).

Conclusions
FRANI AI–assisted dietary assessment could accurately estimate nutrient intake in adolescent females compared with WR in urban Ghana. FRANI estimates were at least as accurate as those provided through 24HR. Further improvements in food recognition and portion estimation in FRANI could reduce errors and improve overall nutrient intake estimations.

× As part of the climate-smart agriculture approach, the adoption of climate resilient crop varieties has the potential to build farmers’ climate resilience but could also induce agricultural transformation in developing nations. We investigate the relationship between adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties and production, consumption, and smallholder commercialization using panel data from Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. We find adoption of climate resilient groundnut varieties to increase smallholder production, consumption, and commercialization. The biggest adoption impact gains are observed under the sustained use of these climate-resilient varieties. We show that adoption benefits all households, but the biggest gains are found among smaller producers, suggesting that adoption is inclusive. Furthermore, we provide suggestive evidence that yield increases could explain commercialization, although household consumption also matters. We conclude that adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties can at least partially reduce production constraints and promote smallholder consumption and commercialization, with implications for agricultural transformation.

× Conservation agriculture techniques have the potential to increase agricultural production while decreasing CO2 emissions, yet adoption in the developing world remains low—in part because many years of continuous adoption may be required to realize gains in production. We conduct a framed field experiment in northern Ghana to study how incentives and peer information may affect adoption. Incentives increase adoption, both while they are available and after withdrawal. There is no overall effect of peer information, but we do find evidence that information about long-term adoption increased adoption, particularly when that information shows that yield gains have been achieved.

× This paper introduces a new framework to quantify costs and benefits for resilience-related outcomes of agricultural innovations targeting smallholder farmers. The framework employs a non-unitary household model with expected utility to quantify welfare benefits associated with non-monetary outcomes that are important from a development perspective, such as improved consumption smoothing, empowerment, and changes in time use. We demonstrate the application of the framework using a case study of climate information services (CIS) in Ghana. We develop a set of individual bargaining weights based on the women’s empowerment in agriculture index, to demonstrate how benefits from CIS are distributed among men and women within households. We find that for the average risk-averse farmer, using CIS is associated with a 37-percent increase in expected utility, but male household heads benefit more than women living in male-headed households. Cost–benefit analyses that do not consider the intrahousehold distribution of benefits associated with agricultural innovations will overestimate benefits accruing to women with low bargaining power.

× Global health and development interventions often are predicated on the reallocation of women's time for the achievement of program objectives; yet research and programs have paid limited attention to women's preferences for and agency over their time use. This study aims to develop and validate an instrument to measure time-use agency. It follows a sequenced approach involving qualitative and quantitative research, with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and assessment of concurrent validity. The authors conducted surveys with women and men within an impact assessment of a livelihoods program being implemented across rural districts in Ghana. Results indicate a three-factor model with subscales for intrinsic time-use agency, voice related to time use, and decision making related to time use, which were each positively correlated with an item on satisfaction with time use. This time-use agency scale should be validated widely and used within global health and development programs.

× The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Irrigation and Mechanization Systems (ILIMS), led by the University of Nebraska’s Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) (Nebraska-ILIMS), was fittingly launched at this year’s World Food Day with the theme “Water is Life, Water is Food. Leave No One Behind.”

The research program’s five areas of inquiry will develop socio-technical bundles that support uptake of mechanization and irrigation, strengthen institutions for natural resource governance and climate resilience, enable scaling of suitable technologies and support development of human resources. The fifth area of inquiry makes a leap from technology to nutrition and health, with the specific aim to “formulate strategies for nutrition-sensitive mechanization and irrigation that safeguard and enhance health and inclusivity.”

× In rural sub-Saharan Africa, where malnutrition in all its forms is rife, the greatest gap between the availability of foods and the foods needed for a nutritious diet are faced during the ‘hunger season’. We investigated what rural households in Northern Ghana would need to grow to ensure year-round availability of a nutrient adequate diet or the income required to fulfil their dietary needs. We applied linear programming to model different scenarios and interventions. Our results provide three major insights. First, considering seasonality is crucial in nutrition-sensitive farming. Ensuring a nutritious diet year-round requires enhanced availability of vegetables and fruits throughout the year. Second, although staple crops do not provide the full range of essential nutrients, increasing their yields allows for a reduction of field size, freeing up space for the production of other foods belonging to a nutritious diet, such as vegetables. Third, small farms are unable to produce sufficient food to cover their needs. They depend on income both from agriculture and other sources, and the availability of types of foods on markets to meet their dietary needs. Our study shows the value of modelling the range of dietary effects from agricultural interventions in a specific context, using a local feasible nutritious diet as a starting point and taking seasonality into account.

× It is widely recognized that periods of crisis affect men and women differently, mediated by their access to resources and information, as well as social and institutional structures that may systematically disadvantage women from being able to access relief, institutional support, and rehabilitation. To capture the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, we conducted phone surveys in seven countries spread across Asia and Africa. The study was designed as a longitudinal panel study with five rounds of data collection in Ghana, Nepal, Nigeria, and Senegal, and three rounds of data collection in Kenya, Niger, and Uganda. Both men and women were administered the same survey, with some modifications made across countries to adapt to local contexts. This report gives an overview of our findings covering several topics including income loss, coping strategies, labor and time use, food and water insecurity and child education outcomes. We find widespread reports of income loss, which declined over time, but increased again as countries experienced a resurgence in COVID-19 cases and fatality. We find that households first depleted savings when faced with income loss and over time, use of savings reduced while other measures began to be adopted. Women reported greater food and water insecurity compared to men, including worrying about insufficient food and eating less than usual. This is particularly worrying since a large proportion of women also did not have adequately diverse diets. Moderate to severe water insecurity was reported in many of the countries, and as with food insecurity, women were more likely to report issues with accessing water for drinking and other household activities. In some countries, additional modules were added to capture country specific issues of policy relevance, such agriculture extension, mental health, and child marriage. The results make it clear that proactive investments will be needed, including social safety nets, favorable credit policies, nutrition and water investments, to ensure that the crisis does not further widen the gender gap in resources and achievements in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries.

× Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. Other factors, such as export bans, have also contributed to rising prices. Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February (Figure 1). Wide variation exists across products, with real maize prices increasing by only 11 percent, and rice prices declining by 13 percent. The price of crude oil and natural gas has also risen substantially, while the weighted average price of fertilizer has doubled. With these changes in global prices, many developing countries and their development partners are concerned about the implications for economic stability, food security, and poverty.

× 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.

× 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.

× In recent years, many developing countries have devolved services to locally elected governments. Although this may strengthen downwards accountability to citizens, does devolution improve service provision? Ghana began devolving agriculture in 2012 to its Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Drawing on an original survey with 80 District Directors of Agriculture and 960 households, as well as district-level budget data and interviews with national and local government stakeholders, this paper shows that agricultural expenditures and services have been negatively affected by the transition. The imperative of electoral accountability encourages assembly members to de-prioritize agriculture in the budget process in favor of more visible goods and services. Budget allocations, however, do reflect the preferences of local citizens, a majority of whom value using elections to sanction their district politicians. The findings indicate that devolution may increase accountability but result in sectoral trade-offs in service provision, which may undermine national policy objectives.

× Over the past decade, the aquaculture sector in Ghana has experienced tremendous growth—driven mainly by large-scale cage aquaculture. Pond aquaculture, traditionally extensive and with limited external inputs, has been transforming over the same period. Farm profitability was wide-ranging, between −12.00 and 46.00 Ghanaian cedi (GHC) per square meter (m2), with an average of GHC 8.82/m2 for farmers active in 2019. Despite wide variability in production and profits, the majority of farmers experienced positive profits—on average, GHC 3.24 per kilogram of tilapia produced, or a 27% profit margin. Farmers who adopted good aquaculture practices and intensified their production have high productivity and positive profits. Nonetheless, the cost to produce 1 kg of tilapia in Ghana (roughly US$1.51 on average) was much higher than in other major tilapia-producing countries (averaging roughly US$0.78 to 1.29). COVID crisis further affected fish farmers: 54% experienced difficulties in accessing inputs, 56% experienced difficulties selling their fish, and farmgate fish prices went down in April–August, although slowly bounced back by end of 2020. Improving the competitiveness and resilience of Ghanaian tilapia sector will require improved seed, increased adoption of good management practices, lower-cost quality feed, and enabling policies and regulations.

× Contract farming has gained in importance in many developing countries. Previous studies analysed effects of contracts on smallholder farmers’ welfare, yet mostly without considering that different types of contractual relationships exist. Here, we examine associations between contract farming and farm household income in the oil palm sector of Ghana, explicitly differentiating between two types of contracts, namely simple marketing contracts and more comprehensive resource-providing contracts. Moreover, we look at different income sources to better understand how both contracts are linked to farmers’ livelihood strategies. We use cross-sectional survey data and regression models. Issues of endogeneity are addressed through measuring farmers' willingness-to-participate in contracts and using this indicator as an additional covariate. Farmers with both types of contracts have significantly higher household incomes than farmers without a contract, yet with notable differences in terms of the income sources. Farmers with a marketing contract allocate more household labour to off-farm activities and thus have higher off-farm income. In contrast, farmers with a resource-providing contract have larger oil palm plantations and thus higher farm incomes. The findings suggest that the two contract types are associated with different livelihood strategies and that disaggregated analysis of different income sources is important to better understand possible underlying mechanisms.

× The current study aimed to understand why child stunting and anemia (CS&A) rates declined in Ghana between 2009 and 2018, and which priority policies and programs will further improve nutrition outcomes. Trends and potential drivers of stunting (height-for-age z-score < -2.0 SD) and anemia (hemoglobin < 11.0 g/dL), and decomposition analysis of DHS data (2003 to 2014) were conducted. The quantitative evidence was triangulated with Net-Map analysis of nutrition stakeholder relationships and influence, desk review of policies and programs 2009–2019, and in-depth interviews with 25 stakeholders who provided additional insights to explain CS&A trends. Declines in stunting (29.6%) and anemia (14.1%) in children were observed at the national level, but with important subgroup variations. Decomposition analyses identified changes in the household, maternal, and child characteristics (including wealth, use of antenatal services, maternal education, and immunization) as correlates of anemia reduction. Stunting reduction was linked with changes in bed-net utilization, household wealth, and pregnancy care service utilization. Additionally, multiple policies and programs initiated/implemented across multiple sectors were considered potentially relevant to CS&A reduction over time, including those focused on infant and young child feeding, water and sanitation, social protection, and health care access. Initiation/strengthening of these interventions was stimulated by awareness creation and subsequently increased prioritization of stunting. However, program delivery was limited by deficits in government funding, perceived low priority of child anemia, low implementation capacity and coverage, and weak coherence across sectors. Reduced CS&A resulted from improved access to services implemented across multiple sectors, albeit limited by implementation scale and capacity. Further reduction in CS&A requires enhanced multi-sectorally coordinated actions and capacity.

× Women’s empowerment is often an important goal of development interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the pathways through which small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers contributes to women’s empowerment. Using qualitative data collected with 144 farmers and traders through 28 individual interviews and 16 focus group discussions, this paper innovates a framework to integrate the linkages between small-scale irrigation and three dimensions of women’s empowerment: resources, agency, and achievements. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. This shows that many women face serious constraints to participating in and benefitting from small-scale irrigation, including difficulties accessing land and water and gender norms that limit women’s ability to control farm assets. Despite these constraints, many women do benefit from participating in irrigated farming activities leading to an increase in their agency and well-being achievements. For some women, these benefits are indirect—these women allocate their time to more preferred activities when the household gains access to modern irrigation technology. The result is a new approach to understanding women’s empowerment in relation to irrigation technology.

× Aquaculture must grow above the current rate of 11% per year to meet projected demand and reduce dependence on seafood imports. Government support and private investment are urgently needed for sustainable growth.

× The effects of agricultural technology adoption on farm performance have been studied extensively but with limited information on who should be targeted during scaling-up. We adopt the newly defined marginal treatment effect approach in examining how farmers’ resource endowment and unobserved factors influence the marginal benefits of adopting sustainable intensification (SI) practices. We estimate both the marginal and average benefits of adopting SI practices and predict which marginal farm household entrants will benefit the most at scale. Findings indicate that farmers’ resource endowment and unobserved factors affect the marginal benefits of adopting SI practices, which also influence maize yield and net returns among adopters. Finally, results imply that scaling up SI practices will favour farm household entrants associated with the lowest probability of adoption based on observed socioeconomic characteristics.

× Diversification is a common livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries, with diversification being either a choice or necessity depending on individual household contexts. Using two waves of data (from 2009 and 2011) for 1773 households from eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, we examined livelihood diversification and its drivers. We examined livelihood diversification by considering household involvement in three livelihood activities: crop, livestock, and non-farm. Results indicated that 40% of households conducted all three livelihood activities, but there was heterogeneity in diversity levels. We used a correlated random effects model to identify the factors that pushed or pulled households to diversify their activities. Access to non-agricultural credit was positively associated with livelihood diversity as it can catalyze involvement in non-farm activities. Drought had a negative effect on livelihood diversity. Area of crop land had a positive effect on the number of livelihood activities conducted. We found that 53% of households added or removed at least one livelihood activity between 2009 and 2011, and the addition of non-farm activities was the most common change. Our results demonstrated the dynamic nature of livelihoods and importance of shocks (such as drought) and resource endowments (land) in understanding household livelihood diversification.

× The FAO-IFPRI study, focuses on the use of tractors because they are among the most versatile farm mechanization tools and are universal power sources for all other driven implements and equipment in agriculture, with significant potential to replace animal draught power and human power, including children’s muscle power. Tractor use is typically also the first type of machine-powered equipment in use at lower levels of agricultural development, the context where most child labour is found. Mechanization is mostly assumed to reduce child labour, as it is expected to be labour saving in general. Yet, this is not always the case, as it has also been observed that the use of tractors and other machinery could increase children’s engagement in farm activities. This may be the case if, for instance, their use allows farms to cultivate larger areas, or if it leads to shifting chores of work from hired labor to family workers, e.g. for weeding edges of farmland not reachable by machinery. Evidence has been scant thus far, but the few available studies have mostly lent greater support to the hypothesis that mechanization reduces children’s productive engagement. Most available studies have focused on specific cases and based on scant data. The new FAO-IFPRI study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment for seven developing countries in Asia (India, Nepal and Viet Nam) and sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania) based on comparable farm household survey data.

× Irrigation has significant potential to enhance productivity, resilience to climatic risks and nutrition security in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the focus has historically been on large-scale dam-based schemes, farmer-managed small-scale irrigation (SSI) has gained increased attention in recent years. Using data from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana, we first examine patterns of adoption of different SSI technologies. Next, we employ hierarchical modelling to examine which variables are associated with observed adoption patterns and cluster effects that explain variation in irrigation adoption. We document significant cross-country variation in adoption patterns and find a positive association between plot-level use of SSI and the intensity of agricultural labor and inorganic fertilizers applied on the plot. Community-level intra-cluster correlation (ICC) is the highest in Tanzania, where gravity-fed irrigation is most common while farm-level ICC is the highest in Ethiopia where motorized technologies are more common. These results suggest the need for localized investments to ease locale-specific potential constraints. For example, easing possible liquidity constraints to acquiring motorized technologies can be more effective in Ethiopia while the construction of dams and improved conveyance systems, as well as the strengthening of community-based irrigation management (e.g., through Water User Associations (WUAs)) can be more effective in Tanzania. Further research is needed to understand pathways for selected plot-level characteristics that affect use of SSI including status of plot ownership and the gender of the plot manager.

× This paper aims to assess the coverage and contribution of different information and communication technology (ICT) tools (mobile phone, WhatsApp platform, television, and radio) in the dissemination of aquaculture and market information to fish farmers in Ghana. Data from a 2021 survey of 391 active fish farmers were analyzed using propensity score matching, inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, and multivariate probit regression models. Mobile phone (phone-based app, internet search, or social media) is the most used ICT tool for aquaculture advice, followed by television programs. Results show that receiving aquaculture information through ICT tools has a positive and significant average treatment effect on the adoption of good management practices, farm productivity, and farmers' income. Farmers receiving aquaculture information from mobile phone and television programs had higher adoption of good practices, production, and income on average. Farmers receiving aquaculture information from both ICT tools and extension agents achieved the highest harvest and income on average. Results also show that the adoption of the various ICT tools is interrelated, whereas several factors—including age, education, farming experience, share of fish farming in household income, and extension contact—influence the choice of ICT tool. Mobile-based extension was more accessible to youth and more educated farmers, and it could be a good medium for reaching these groups. Television and radio programs are accessible to all types of farmers from different backgrounds; these media are currently underutilized for aquaculture promotion and their application could be enhanced and expanded for current and future projects.

× Farm input subsidies are widely used in Sub-Saharan African countries as a response to low adoption of fertilizers and seeds. While subsidy programs traditionally focused on helping farmers access inputs, new generation market smart subsidies additionally emphasize careful targeting, development of input supply systems, and complementary production and marketing support mechanisms. Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, launched in 2017, is one example of such an evolved subsidy program; yet, despite its scale and prominence, the current government monitoring and evaluation system is not well equipped to accurately assess its impacts. This paper triangulates evidence from multiple public sources and independent evaluations to develop a simple and effective impact assessment model for PFJ that can easily be adopted by the government. It can also be adapted to other contexts with minimal adjustment. Model results reveal that maize and rice production levels are more than 40 percent higher than they would have been in the absence of PFJ, thus contributing significantly to food and calorie availability in Ghana. However, there is much room for efficiency improvements that would increase the return on investment-currently, program benefits roughly equal public and private costs of the program. In this regard, several recommendations are made relating to beneficiary targeting, crowding out of commercial input sales, input use efficiency, marketing support to farmers, and improvements in the monitoring and evaluation system, all of which have relevance for other countries implementing or considering similar programs.

× Feed accounts for 60–80% of tilapia production costs, and high feed cost and limited feed access are major issues faced by fish farmers. A potential solution is for farmers to produce their own feeds using cheaper and locally available ingredients. This paper evaluates the feed formulation training implemented in Ghana as part of the Fisheries Commission's activities under the Ghana Aquaculture for Food and Jobs program. This paper analyzes baseline and follow-up survey data using difference-in-difference estimation and analysis of covariance. One year after the training, results show positive impact on the farmers' knowledge of feed formulation, quantity of feed formulated, feeding and management practices, productivity, and income. Feed formulation training encouraged more farmers to formulate their own feeds and maintained or increased total feeds used in their facilities from 2018/2019 to 2020/21. Among the farmers who did not receive training, feed formulation activities and feed quantity used reduced from 2018/19 to 2020/21. A common practice is the use of locally available quality commercial feed as starter feed for smaller fish and own-formulated feeds as a complement for or alternative to commercial growout feeds for bigger fish. Especially when constrained by lack of funds, many farmers reduce the use of commercial feeds and formulate their feeds using cheaper and locally available raw materials to maintain similar levels of feeding intensity. Feed formulation acts as an important coping strategy in the context of small-scale farmers with limited financial resources. This study recommends scaling out feed formulation training and expanding research on optimal fish nutrition using locally available and low-cost raw materials, in combination with commercial feeds to maximize productivity and incomes for farmers.

× A critical, yet underexplored, dimension of food systems is how consumer food preferences and beliefs interact with the food environment. We present a consumer-centered approach to identifying options for improving diets. The Value Chains for Nutrition (VCN) mixed-methods multi-disciplinary analytical approach was applied in rural Ghana. Data from in-depth consumer interviews, structured vendor interviews, and (secondary) household consumption surveys were analyzed to assess consumer diet patterns, related norms and preferences, and supply and demand characteristics of a set of empirically defined high-potential nutritious foods. Mapping results onto a supply–demand typology, we identify promising interventions to support increased availability, access, and affordability of these foods. Consumption data suggested that diets among Ghanaians were deficient in key micronutrients and calories. Fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables tended to be grown for home consumption rather than sale due to transportation challenges and seasonality of demand, especially near rural markets. Seasonal availability (fruits and vegetables) and affordability (animal foods) severely limited consumption of many nutritious foods. A set of supply, demand, and value chain interventions to enhance availability and affordability of nutritious foods are presented. Critical to success is to consider the set of interventions along each value chain required for impact.

× An enabling, evidence-based decision-making framework is critical to support agricultural biotechnology innovation, and to ensure farmers’ access to genetically modified (GM) crops, including orphan crop varieties. A key element, and often a challenge in the decision making process, involves the balancing of identified potential risks with expected economic benefits from GM crops. The latter is particularly challenging in the case of orphan crops, for which solid economic data is scarce. To address this challenge, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in collaboration with local economists analyzed the expected economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the adoption of GM crops in 5 sub-Saharan African countries. This paper focuses on case studies involving insect resistant cowpea in Nigeria and Ghana; disease-resistant cassava in Uganda and Tanzania; and disease-resistant banana in Uganda. Estimations from these case studies show substantial economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the timely adoption and planting in farmers’ fields of GM orphan crops. Our analysis also shows how the benefits would significantly be reduced by regulatory or other delays that affect the timely release of these crops. These findings underscore the importance of having an enabling policy environment and regulatory system—covering, among other elements, biosafety and food/feed safety assessment, and varietal release registration—that is efficient, predictable, and transparent to ensure that the projected economic benefits are delivered and realized in a timely manner.

× Public agriculture expenditure is a significant growth catalyst. However, evaluating the impact of public agriculture expenditure on food security remains scanty. This paper assessed the impact of public expenditure on food security in nine ECOWAS countries using four indicators of food security, one in each dimension (availability, access, utilization and stability). Using a fixed-effect generalized least squares model the study found that public agricultural expenditure has improved. However, this has not translated to an automatic improvement in food security. The levels of stunting and undernourishment were still high in the nine ECOWAS countries. A one-unit increase in public agriculture expenditure was associated with a 0.2% reduction in undernourishment andan improved average dietary energy supply adequacy between 2000 and 2016. The paper concluded that the nine ECOWAS countries have made considerable progress in improving food availability, that public agriculture expenditure by share has increased in the nine ECOWAS countries since the inception of CAADP, with several countries meeting the 10% target of spending on agriculture for several years and that public agricultural expenditure had a positive impact on food accessibility and availability. The analysis could be replicated in the design of national food security investment plans and help identify strategies to accelerate food security and nutrition improvements in African countries.

× Aquaculture in Ghana is experiencing tremendous growth, led mainly by large-scale commercial cage operators. A major objective of the government and its partners is to ensure that this rapid growth is sustainable and includes small-scale farmers and poor rural producers. This paper evaluates the aquaculture trainings implemented in six main tilapia-producing regions in Ghana as part of the Ghana Tilapia Seed Project. The impact evaluation is designed as a cluster randomized controlled trial, with half of the producing districts randomly-assigned as the treatment and the rest as the control, complemented by qualitative interviews. One year after the trainings, results show positive impacts on the adoption of good record-keeping, water management, and some biosecurity practices, and on productivity and incomes. In terms of mechanism, improved management practices resulted from reducing overstocking, reducing inbreeding, maintaining water level for fish ponds, regular pond clearing and establishing physical barriers, following advice and recommendations on feeding practices, and complementing feeding practices with farmers’ own feed formulation. Half of the trained farmers experienced lower fish mortality, faster growth, and heavier fish at harvest. Marketing and processing advice through the trainings and complementary FishConnect WhatsApp platform likely contributed to higher incomes, although the platform's coverage and regular updating can be improved.

× Unhealthy diets are a critical global concern while dietary measure methods are time consuming and expensive. There is limited evidence that phone-based interventions can improve nutrition data collection and dietary quality, especially for adolescents in developing countries. We developed an artificial-intelligence-based phone application called Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI) to address these problems. FRANI can recognize foods in images, track food consumption, display statistics and use gamified nudges to give positive feedback on healthy food choice. This study protocol describes the design of new pilot studies aimed at measuring the feasibility (acceptability, adherence, and usability) of FRANI and its effects on the quality of food choice of adolescents in Ghana and Vietnam. In each country, 36 adolescents (12–18 years) will be randomly allocated into two groups: The intervention group with the full version of FRANI and the control group with the functionality limited to image recognition and dietary assessment. Participants in both groups will have their food choices tracked for four weeks. The control groups will then switch to the full version of FRANI and both groups will be tracked for a further 2 weeks to assess acceptability, adherence, and usability. Analysis of outcomes will be by intent to treat and differences in outcomes between intervention and control group will use Poisson and odds ratio regression models, accounting for repeated measures at individual levels. If deemed feasible, acceptable and usable, FRANI will address gaps in the literature and advance the nutrition field by potentially improving the quality of food choices of adolescent girls in developing countries. This pilot study will also provide insights on the design of a large randomized controlled trial. The functioning and dissemination of FRANI can be an important step towards highly scalable nutrition data collection and healthier food choices for a population at risk of malnutrition.

× In anticipation of the development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine—the distribution of which will be a complex and sensitive issue—governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. Problematically, however, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. The most widely used dataset by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (Dong, Du, and Gardner 2020), for example, does not include subnational data for Feed the Future’s 12 target countries in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) and South Asia: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Uganda. For this reason, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to correlate Demographic and Health Survey data from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with geospatial data in order to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators based on which potential risk hotspots were identified. This policy note summarizes the study’s analysis in the 12 Feed the Future countries and across subnational administrative units within each country.

× As COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available, governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. However, problematically, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. To support the COVID-19 relief effort, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators and potential risk hotspots.

× This report examines the evolution of farm input subsidy programs in Ghana, with a focus on the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, which was introduced in 2017 and replaced the Fertilizer Subsidy Program (FSP) that was launched in 2008. A review of PFJ implementation reports and other official data sources reveal that information on general program features, such as beneficiary numbers, subsidized input quantities, and program budget is readily available and useful for understanding program design and implementation. National crop production estimates are also reported annually, and these provide evidence of rapid output growth in the agricultural sector, especially within the cereals subsector. However, the implementing agency, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), lacks a system for closely monitoring and reporting PFJ program impacts at farm-level. Consequently, most of the published information on the marginal contribution of PFJ to national crop output is based on simulations, which make strong assumptions about seeding rates, fertilizer use by crop, and input use efficiency on beneficiary farms. With this drawback in mind, these simulations show that PFJ contributed substantially to crop output growth, a result which is not implausible considering the quantities of inputs provided, but one that requires further on-farm validation. Recommendations are offered around beneficiary targeting, interpretation of employment impacts, and the need for regular monitoring of farm-level impacts, all of which will help improve transparency of the program.

× Ghana’s aquaculture sector is among the recent success stories of fast-growing agricultural value chains in Africa south of the Sahara. The sector has also shown its vulnerability, with the infectious spleen and kidney necrosis virus spreading through tilapia farms in Lake Volta in late 2018. The global COVID-19 human pandemic reached Ghana in early 2020, affecting the sector directly and indirectly. Using a value chain approach, phone interviews were conducted with 369 small-scale fish farmers in six major producing regions, with 12 other value chain actors, and with 423 consumers in the capital, Accra, to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the sector. All value chain actors interviewed reported being affected directly by COVID-19 related restrictions on movement and indirectly by reduced demand for tilapia because of closures in the tourism and hospitality industries, important consumers of fresh tilapia. The crisis has reduced incomes for most actors along the aquaculture value chain and is anticipated to reduce future production. Most fish farmers surveyed were affected by disruptions in input and output markets. Two-thirds of the sample farmers were growing fish and 6 percent were harvesting when the COVID-19 crisis hit. Fifty-four percent of those growing fish experienced difficulties in accessing inputs – mainly fish feeds. Of those harvesting during the crisis, most experienced difficulty in selling their fish mainly because of low demand from buyers, lower tilapia prices, and higher transportation costs than before COVID-19. Income losses among fish farmers, including from other sources, such as crop farming, wage employment, and other own businesses, limits the funds that they have available to finance fish farming operations or to invest in future production capacity. Likewise, reduced incomes and purchasing power of consumers is causing a sharp decline in demand for fish.

× Background: Low quality diets are a public health problem affecting individuals of all ages worldwide. Nudging for Good (NFG) is a new research project aimed at developing, validating, and examining the feasibility of using artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology to improve adolescent girls' diets in urban Ghana and Vietnam. Objectives: Provide evidence to support the design of a new mobile phone intervention including: a) identifying the demand for mobile app to improve diets in adolescent girls; b) defining the intervention objectives and activities to be delivered via a mobile app; and c) assessing the potential for nudging functionality to be incorporated in the mobile app. Methods: This study used mixed methods including both literature and nutrition-related app reviews, as well as focus group discussions. A literature review was conducted using PubMed and Google Scholar databases, and intervention studies using technology to improve nutrition outcomes of adolescents were included. Nine focus group discussions (five in Ghana and four in Vietnam) were undertaken with 61 girls to gauge smartphone and internet access and use and to obtain feedback on the prototype of a mobile app. Results: Nine studies met the selection criteria for the literature review, including seven randomized control trials (RCTs) and two systematic reviews. The evidence from the literature on how technology-based nutrition interventions should be conducted and what should be the best outcomes of success was mixed. Most of the 22 apps reviewed required manual entry of dietary information, and recommended diets based on motivation to change body weight. In the focus groups discussions, the adolescents suggested modifications on the prototype of the mobile app we presented, and indicated possibility to regularly take pictures of foods and beverages during meal time. Conclusion: We did not find an app available in either the Ghana or Vietnam markets that could improve dietary quality of adolescents without focusing on weight. Most apps available only had manual features to log food intake, which is time consuming. Moreover, adolescents expressed interest in using a new, modified version of the app we presented. We aim at developing a new mobile phone application based on AI technology that gives personalized and reliable nutrition advice to improve adolescent girls’ diets. However, the literature review was not conclusive on what should be the characteristics of an app and how interventions to measure an app’s impact on dietary quality should be conducted.

× This paper provides an in-depth account of the chili value chain in the Brong Ahafo area of Ghana, looking at the agronomic practices of producers, marketing choices by chili type, and practices of traders along different commercial corridors.
Using original survey data of producers and traders, the paper addresses two questions: Are there opportunities to increase the productivity of chilies? Does the marketing system deliver a significant share of the consumer prices to producers?
Chili yields are less than 1.0 mt/ha against a yield potential in Ghana of nearly 8 mt/ha. Long chili growers in the top 10 percentile by yields harvested nearly 18 bags compared to the average of 11 bags per acre obtained by all producers. These higher chili yields resulted primarily by applying higher levels of inorganic fertilizers. Many producers have adopted improved chili varieties – nearly 70 percent of long chili producers reported having planted Legon 18, the variety which is generally used for making chili powder. Producers also reported maintaining their crop in the field for unusually long periods to extend their production into leaner production periods.
Prices vary geographically by day and by marketing channel. The margins earned by traders on the sale price of their chilis range from 20 to 100 percent under different conditions. The chili value chain is short. The bulk of chilis produced reaches consumers with only one intermediary between producer and consumer. Fresh and dry chilies are marketed differently. Nearly 80 percent of dry chili producers sell at their farm gate, where they tend to obtain prices that are higher than those received by producers who take their dry chilies to markets. The reverse is true for fresh chili producers, however. It is plausible that producers choose between producing dry long or fresh round chilies depending on their marketing ability. Social networks influence the choice by producers of what traders to engage with, suggesting that producers with stronger ties to traders obtain higher prices.

× Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) is Ghana’s flagship program for agricultural transformation and employment creation. Alongside other components, the program provides subsidized fertilizer, hybrid and open-pollinated seeds and other planting materials, improved extension services, and marketing support to smallholder farmers across the country. The objective of this study was to assess the implementation process of the PFJ input subsidy program in order to identify opportunities for strengthening the process. The study focused only on fertilizer distribution as a distinct complex process of importance, although some of the lessons will be applicable to other components of the PFJ program. The study applied the Process Net-Map method, a research approach that is particularly useful for assessing the coherence between formally prescribed procedures and how those procedures are implemented in practice, enabling the identification of inefficiencies and bottlenecks in a complex process.
The implementation of the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program was mapped in interviews with key informants at national level and in six districts. Interviews with national-level stakeholders yielded important insights about the complex largely administrative process involved in the implementation of PFJ, which is generally unseen by beneficiaries. These administrative processes, however, have a considerable impact on the timeliness of the program and provide an outline of the intended implementation process at the local district level. The perspectives of farmers with regards to these processes were also investigated through in-depth interviews. Across the study districts we found some ambiguity and inconsistency in following the formally prescribed procedures for implementing the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program.
While we found broad agreement among key informants and farmers that the program is meeting its objectives, some areas in which the implementation process for the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program could be improved are highlighted. These improvements will enhance the efficiency and impact of the program.

× While the lockdown in Ghana due to COVID-19 was not as stringent or long as in other countries (at least up to June 2021), it has severely affected rural household incomes, including remittances.
Almost three-quarters of households surveyed reported income loss due to the pandemic in Aug/Sep 2020.
Use of savings, borrowing and asset sales were common. Women often relied on men’s savings as a coping strategy; government transfers were insignificant.
Addressing COVID-19 in rural areas is hindered by a domestic water supply crisis. Approximately half of respondents reported being worried about water availability, changing their activities due to lack of water, not having enough drinking water, and not washing hands when necessary.

× Ghana’s rising population, coupled with erratic weather patterns and soil nutrient deficiencies, pose a significant challenge to food crop production. In responding to universal calls for actions to end poverty, the Government of Ghana (GoG) launched the flagship Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program in 2017. PFJ is designed to promote on-farm productivity through the intensification of fertilizer subsidies and adoption of improved seeds of targeted crops, thereby enabling job creation in agriculture and other interrelated sectors. Implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), the PFJ program works in concert with other existing agricultural programs and policies to achieve the universal goal of ending hunger, achieving food security, and improving nutrition by promoting efficient and sustainable intensification and climate-proofing of agriculture by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal 2).

× This paper provides a description of the agricultural input market in Ghana in 2019 across six districts with high maize production and two municipal districts noted for agricultural marketing activities. Since 2017, Ghana’s agricultural policy has been heavily focused on implementation of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program, which has rapidly scaled up the distribution of subsidized seed and fertilizer with the aim of increasing agricultural productivity and production. Agricultural input dealers play a crucial role in the PFJ program as the final node in the supply chain of seed and fertilizer for farmers. Their operations are expected to enhance the availability of and access to these agricultural inputs. Understanding the characteristics and operations of agricultural input dealers can help policymakers to formulate, implement, and reform seed and fertilizer policies. Our study shows low levels of specialization among agricultural input shops, high participation in the sector association, an increase in the entry of traders into the agricultural input market since the launch of PFJ, and a continuing concentration on fertilizer sales compared to seed sales. Major constraints that agricultural input supplier face in expanding their businesses include difficulties in obtaining financial support from the banking sector, still unreliable supplies, and, for subsidized inputs, the slow processing by government of the subsidy vouchers farmers gave them in exchange for inputs.

× The triple burden of malnutrition is growing in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Increasing access to affordable ultra-processed foods in the food environment is contributing to this problem. While existing explanations for this triple burden of malnutrition have examined demand-side factors of food choices, the supply-side policies relating to the food environment drivers, ideas and actors’ interests have been neglected. Using a case study of Ghana, this analysis combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with the narrative policy analysis to unpack the supply-side food environment policies and actors driving the triple burden of malnutrition. Applying a mixed methods analysis of the transcripts, the narratives reveal public, private and civil society organization (CSO) coalitions with different ideas and interests in the food environment. In the private sector coalition, food companies engage in aggressive advertising and are driven by profit motives – leading to the supply of more ultra-processed foods. The public sector is failing to regulate the market because of inadequate policies, limited institutional capacities and coordination, enforcement challenges, inadequate resources, and self-interest. Social activism by CSOs, for example, pressuring food companies to deliver healthy foods and holding the government accountable, is also lacking. The result is a triple sector (public, private and CSO) failure in the urban food environment with consequences on the availability of ultra-processed foods. This has long-lasting implications for the reduction of the triple burden of malnutrition and the achievement of zero hunger. To accelerate nutrition-sensitive food environments that deliver healthier food options, we argue that it is critical to entertain the ideas and interests of stakeholders and implement food environment policies that cover private and public sector initiatives, as well as increase consumer awareness.

× This publication presents an in-depth analysis of the food system in Ghana with the dual purpose of providing an overview of the current situation, and identifying opportunities for leveraging the role of small and medium-sized enterprises for nutrition-sensitive food systems. The data collected and the results of the analysis enhance the understanding of some of the challenges that, in the Ghanaian context, contribute to determining diet-related issues; more importantly, the analysis identifies opportunities and entry points for improving diets by overcoming some of the challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises. The information provided could be of support not only for further analyses, but also for planning interventions and designing policies to improve nutrition in Ghana and in other contexts.

× This report presents the outcomes of a workshop organized by IFPRI and FAO in Ghana; it represents the result of a wider process of analysis and interventions aiming to leverage the role of small and medium-sized enterprises to improve nutrition in Ghana. The information provided may prove useful for researchers, practitioners, international organizations and policy-makers in planning interventions, designing policies or analyzing contexts other than Ghana.

× This brief summarizes nutrition-relevant policies in Ghana.
We examine i) nutrition context, policy objectives, indicators, budget, and activities, ii) key beneficiaries, actors and coordination, iii) monitoring, evaluation, and accountability, and iv) whether current policies are aligned with the World Health Assembly (WHA) global targets.

× La présente note résume les politiques pertinentes mises en oeuvre au Ghana en matière de nutrition.
Nous examinons i) le contexte nutritionnel, les objectifs des politiques, les indicateurs, le budget et les activités planifiées ; ii) les bénéficiaires clés, les acteurs et la coordination ; iii) les mécanismes de suivi-évaluation et de responsabilisation des politiques et iv) si les politiques actuelles sont en adéquation avec les objectifs mondiaux de l’Assemblée mondiale de la santé (AMS).

× This note provides guidance for improving nutrition-relevant policy in West Africa, drawn from a comprehensive policy review of nutrition-relevant policies in 16 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

× Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including in Africa south of the Sahara, face a “new nutrition reality” (Popkin, Corvalan, and Grummer-Strawn 2020) referred to as the double burden of malnutrition, where children under five years of age (U5s) and women of reproductive age (WRA) continue to experience high rates of undernutrition while, at the same time, the rates of overweight and obesity in these populations are on the rise (Development initiatives 2020).

× Transform Nutrition West Africa has identified key priorities for future action in the West Africa region. It has done so in consultation with stakeholders, including researchers, NGOs, members of civil society and the private sector, and representatives from government, the United Nations, and donor agencies. Consultations involved capturing, documenting, and learning from implementation experiences, and accelerating equitable program coverage of mother, infant, and young child interventions at scale. Stakeholders specifically identified the need for
contextualization and implementation of interventions to promote breastfeeding.

× Governments and international development partners investing over $40 USD billion a year in school meals have shown interest in linking these programs with agriculture sector development, through what has become known as “Home-Grown” school feeding (HGSF). Nevertheless, evidence on the effectiveness of HGSF and agriculture is limited. This article reports on the findings of a three-year cluster randomized trial implemented in 58 districts of Ghana including a panel of 1,668 households. Communities were randomly assigned to 1) standard school meals; 2) HGSF or 3) control with no intervention. Post-intervention, the caterer-level analysis highlighted major challenges related to delayed program disbursements, resulting in a mismatch between budgeted and actual caterer outlay on food purchases per pupil equivalent to approximately 50% of the budgeted per child per day allocation. For caterers, by far the largest procurement channel was through traders, though there is evidence that HGSF may have increased the share of value purchased directly from smallholders. We find no strong evidence that the school feeding program or HGSF affected smallholders market structure, farm, non-farm and household income. When interpreting these null results, it is important to consider the findings of two parallel studies that showed positive effects of this national program on school children’s learning, cognition, and nutrition outcomes. The national program can still be considered as an effective social protection strategy with multiple objectives, even if the agriculture objectives remain aspirational.

× Ce profil présente une évaluation du potentiel d’un pays à rendre compte de la couverture nationale1 pour un ensemble de 16 interventions sur la nutrition. Il recommande des actions essentielles pour renforcer la mesure de la couverture. Les données de couverture des interventions sont essentielles au suivi de la mise en oeuvre et à la mesure de l’impact des stratégies et des investissements visant à réduire la malnutrition.

× This profile provides an assessment of a country’s potential to report on national-level coverage1 for a set of 16 nutrition interventions and recommends key actions to strengthen coverage measurement. Intervention coverage data is essential for tracking implementation and impact of strategies and investments to reduce malnutrition.

× In the context of a mounting burden of overweight and obesity and a persisting burden of undernutrition, double-duty actions (DDAs) (Figure 1) [1] are needed to tackle multiple forms of malnutrition simultaneously [2]. These include “interventions, programs and policies that have the potential to simultaneously reduce the risk or burden of both undernutrition (including wasting, stunting and micronutrient deficiency or insufficiency) and overweight, obesity or diet-related NCDs”. The World Health Organization has characterized the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) as “the coexistence of undernutrition (i.e. micronutrient deficiencies, underweight, and childhood stunting and wasting), along with overweight and obesity, or diet-related noncommunicable diseases, within individuals, households and populations, and across the life course” [3]. Coordinated policy action is, therefore, needed to ensure that a focus on the double burden is integrated into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs with potential double-duty effects across the life course, with intra- and inter-generational implications [1,3,4,5].

× Cette note fournit des orientations pour l’amélioration des politiques pertinentes en matière de nutrition en Afrique de l’Ouest. Elle est tirée d’un examen détaillé des politiques liées à la nutrition dans 16 pays : le Bénin, le Burkina Faso, le Cap-Vert, la Côte d’Ivoire, la Gambie, le Ghana, la Guinée, la Guinée-Bissau, le Libéria, le Mali, la Mauritanie, le Niger, le Nigéria, le Sénégal, la Sierra Leone et le Togo.

× Transform Nutrition West Africa a identifié les principales priorités pour des actions futures dans la région de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Pour ce faire, elle a consulté les parties prenantes, notamment des chercheurs, des ONG, des membres de la société civile et du secteur privé, ainsi que des représentants du gouvernement, des Nations Unies et des organismes donateurs. Les consultations ont porté sur la collecte, la documentation et l’apprentissage d’expériences de mise en oeuvre, ainsi que sur l’accélération de la couverture équitable des programmes d’intervention à grande échelle auprès de la mère, du nourrisson et du jeune enfant. Les parties prenantes ont spécifiquement identifié le besoin de contextualiser et de mettre en oeuvre les interventions visant à promouvoir l’allaitement maternel.

× Les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire (PRFI), notamment en Afrique subsaharienne, font face à une « nouvelle réalité nutritionnelle » (Popkin, Corvalan, and Grummer-Strawn 2020) appelée le double fardeau de la malnutrition, où les enfants de moins de cinq ans (U5) et les femmes en âge de procréer (FAP) continuent de faire face à des taux élevés de malnutrition alors que, dans le même temps, les taux de surpoids et d’obésité au sein de ces populations sont en augmentation (Development initiatives 2020).

× Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main work activities over the past year. Descriptions are recorded in the field, postcoded, and eventually categorized. This approach is costly to collect, fatiguing for respondents, and may create distortions. We show that a more direct approach, asking respondents to categorize their major work activities themselves, provides similar resulting data despite some caveats and lessons for best enumeration practices. We compare these main activities to a series of yes/no questions about participation in a set of specific work tasks. We find a 12% incidence of “missing” work, whereby individuals who reported participation in at least one but did not have any recorded major activities. Looking by sector of work, women and youth are disproportionately more likely to have agricultural contributions “missed,” while we find no corresponding bias in undercounting of non-agricultural work. Finally, we test the effect of randomly positioning the task-based questions before the listing of major activities but do not find significant effects on the number or type of activities reported.

× This study provides an assessment of changes in household income, livelihood sources, food consumption, and diet quality during the first months of the COVID-19 crisis in a sample of households drawn from both urban and rural areas in Ghana. Phone surveys were conducted in June 2020 with 423 urban consumers in Accra and with 369 small-scale crop and fish farmers in rural areas in six regions in middle and southern Ghana. Data was disaggregated by asset quintiles for both the urban and the rural samples.
Reduction in incomes were reported by 83 percent of urban households in Accra, mainly due to business closures and lower sales from their trading enterprises. Most households, however, are showing resilience in terms of food consumption, with a majority of urban consumers surveyed maintaining their pre-COVID-19 level of food consumption; only 9 percent of urban consumers reported reductions in food consumption to cope with income loss due to COVID-19.
For the respondents in the rural areas in middle and southern Ghana, 76 percent reported income loss, and all reported that their livelihoods had been affected. Thirty-four percent of 2020 minor season crop farmers experienced difficulty in selling their produce, and 43 percent of all sample crop farmers anticipated difficulties in accessing inputs in the 2020 major season, mainly fertilizers and agrochemicals. Of those growing fish, 53 percent experienced difficulty in accessing inputs, mainly feeds; 60 percent reported increased input prices; and 64 percent of those harvesting from March to June 2020 experienced difficulties in selling their fish because of lower demand, lower tilapia prices, and higher transportation costs. Despite farm and nonfarm income losses, a majority of households in the rural sample reported maintaining previous levels of diet diversity and food consumption - only 11 percent reported reducing their food consumption to cope with income loss.
Several months into the COVID-19 crisis in Ghana, households in both rural and urban areas showed some resilience in terms of their agricultural production and food consumption. Regular monitoring is needed, however, especially if household savings start to dry up and coping mechanisms become more restrictive.

× Social protection programs such as cash or food transfers support current poverty and inequality reduction goals, while at the same time enhance future productivity through human capital investments. Yet, the quantification of their overall productivity and equity benefits is challenging. We address this question utilizing a new methodology that quantifies productivity gains from learning as well as an approach for assessing social protection benefits. We do so by combining data on distributional benefits stemming from current poverty reduction in conjunction with future human capital gains in the context of a large-scale national school feeding program in Ghana. We develop a straightforward approach to map effect sizes from randomized controlled studies into broader economic analyses. In addition, we include the often recognized, but seldom quantified, distributional impacts of multi-sectoral investments. Our methodology is relevant to a broad range of social protection programs that have multidimensional benefits spanning both human capital improvements and equity gains.

× Agricultural research and development (R&D) is one component of public investments in the agricultural sector toward food system transformation. Enhancing the effectiveness of agricultural R&D remains critical, given increasingly scarce public resources. Exploring spatial spillover potentials has been one way to enhance the effectiveness of agricultural R&D. Geographical locations of National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) research activities are recognized as an important factor affecting such spatial spillover potentials. However, evidence is generally limited in Africa south of Sahara (SSA) as to the spillover potentials of NARS-developed technologies. This paper partly aims to fill this knowledge gap by obtaining insights for maize, one of the most commonly grown crops in SSA, using nationally representative farm household data for Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda, and spatial agroclimatic data. Building on recent literature, this study proxies spillover potentials by “agroclimatic similarity” (AS) indicators between locations where agricultural R&D for maize is conducted by NARS (research locations) and where each farm household is located (farm locations). Results of the analyses suggest that an indicator of the total factor productivity of maize growing farm households, the land productivity of maize, and the use of improved maize varieties are generally higher in farm locations that share similar agroclimatic conditions with maize research locations of NARS. These patterns hold for all four countries studied, even after controlling for the physical proximity to maize research stations and other farm household characteristics. The findings contribute to better understanding of how geographic locations of public investments affect their overall effectiveness as well as returns in maize production and the agricultural sector in general.

× Gender differences in the engagement of work activities across sectors are important elements of gender inequality in rural livelihoods and welfare in developing countries. The role of production technologies, including agricultural mechanization, in addressing gender inequality, is increasingly explored. Knowledge gaps remain, however, including, how agricultural mechanization differentially affect labor engagements across sectors. This study aims to partly fill these knowledge gaps through micro-evidence from 8 countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, Nepal, Tajikistan and Vietnam), using several nationally representative panel data and supplementary data, and applying Correlated-Random-Effects Double-Hurdle models with Instrumental-Variables. We find that the use of tractors and/or combine harvesters by the household induces greater shift from farm activities to non-farm activities by female members than by male members. While statistical significance varies, these patterns generally hold consistently across all 8 countries studied. These patterns also seem to hold across different farm sizes. While these are short-term relations, agricultural mechanization proxied by tractor and/or combine harvesters is one of the important contributors to gendered rural livelihood. Future studies should more closely investigate underlying mechanisms and implications of these patterns.

× Ghana has a long history of intervening in food markets to balance consumers’ expectations of low and stable food prices, farmers’ demands for high farmgate prices, and traders’ demand for predictability in seasonal price patterns. However, government interventions may also alter the behavior of markets and alter incentives or risks for all market actors. The Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, launched in 2017, signaled a renewed commitment from government to agriculture and is Ghana’s flagship strategy for boosting smallholder production, strengthening market linkages, and developing value chains. Given this significant policy shift, we examine agricultural commodity price patterns before and after 2017 to identify potential structural shifts in price behavior in maize, tomato, and onion markets, three key sectors targeted by PFJ. Results show maize and tomato prices drop below their long-term trend under PFJ, but not onion prices. Tomato and onion prices exhibit smaller seasonal price variations. These results are indicative of a structural shift in food markets, although further analysis is required to conclusively attribute these changes to PFJ.

× Fertilizer use in Sub-Saharan Africa remains below recommended rates, contributing to low yields, and increasing poverty. Poor quality fertilizer – whether perceived or real – is often cited as a reason for low adoption rates. In Ghana, for example, there are widespread but often unsubstantiated claims of substandard fertilizers. This is a concern for farmers with limited purchasing power and without the means to independently substantiate the quality of agricultural inputs. This paper describes the agricultural input sector in Ghana, compares farmers’ perception of fertilizer quality with those of input dealers, and analyses chemical tests of fertilizers performed in a laboratory. The fertilizers were sampled from selected districts participating in the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative, a large-scale farm input subsidy program. We find that input dealers and farmers are somewhat suspicious of the quality of commercially supplied and government subsidized fertilizers. However, the true quality measures based on laboratory testing of fertilizers sold in agricultural input shops were found to largely meet the labeled chemical composition.

× The evidence on the potential for agricultural interventions to contribute to improved nutrition has grown considerably over the past decade (Ruel et al., 2018). Numerous studies have explored both positive and negative effects of agriculture on nutrition and health (Ruel and Alderman, 2013; Herforth and Harris, 2014; Masset et al., 2012; Hoddinott, 2012). However, as an important and growing component of agriculture, smallscale irrigation has not yet been given the attention it deserves. The Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) set out, among others, to fill the evidence gap on irrigation-nutrition linkages. Domènech (2015) describes several potential pathways through which irrigation can influence food security, nutrition, and health outcomes, including 1) a production pathway, 2) an income pathway, 3) a water supply pathway, and 4) a women’s empowerment pathway. To illustrate these pathways, we adapted the agriculturenutrition framework of Herforth and Harris (2014) to include irrigation (Figure 1), while also noting a fifth, negative pathway that links irrigation to water pollution and disease via the application of fertilizers and pesticides and via supporting vector-borne diseases, such as malaria or schistosomiasis, respectively (Passarelli et al., 2018).

× Effective policies and programs aiming to reduce poverty require a clear understanding of how people earn their livelihoods. While great gains have been made in the quantity and availability of data, capturing individuals’ labor supply and types of job activities is still challenging. Measuring employment is especially difficult in settings where productive activities are informal, leading to irregular intensity of engagement, and seasonal, where the majority of effort and earning is concentrated in specific periods of the year. These characteristics tend to be especially relevant in rural labor markets in low-income countries where agriculture and agriculture-linked employment are preeminent. In a set of three studies, IFPRI researchers Kate Ambler and Sylvan Herskowitz, in collaboration with Mywish Maredia of Michigan State University, explore the ways in which survey design can affect the quality of resulting labor data in rural populations. The papers examine the effects of household roster order, question type, and recall windows on resulting data. Survey design decisions matter and, if not careful, can induce unintended noise, or more troublingly, bias in resulting data.

× Child labour in agriculture remains a global concern. Agriculture is the sector where most child labour is found. Employment of children mostly relates to farm household poverty in developing countries. This raises the question of the extent to which the modernisation of agriculture prevents the use of child labour while also leading to higher productivity. One of the central questions in this context is whether agricultural mechanisation helps limit children’s employment. Available studies have put forward opposing hypotheses, but rigorous empirical evidence is scant. The present study aims to fill some of this void by studying the evidence from comparable farm household survey data in seven developing countries, including three in Asia (India, Nepal, and Vietnam) and four in sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania).
Various key findings emerge. First, many children are found to engage in productive activities in studied countries. The prevalence is particularly high in African countries, such as in Ethiopia where more than one third of children aged 5-14 years engage in farm or off-farm work. Second, while the prevalence of child labour in agriculture (i.e., when productive engagement is detrimental to schooling and child growth) is much lower (at 10% or less in seven countries), they are still sizable in absolute terms; at least 6 million children in these countries partake in agricultural work at the expense of opportunities in adulthood. Third, agricultural mechanization, reflected in farm household’s use of machinery such as tractors, significantly reduces the likelihood of use of children’s labour and increases school attendance. Fourth, the measured impacts of mechanization are only modest, however, and likely indirect, that is, dependent on the extent to which mechanization helps improve household income and on local conditions (such as quality of rural infrastructure and accessibility of education and other social services).
Overall, promotion of agricultural mechanization can help prevent use of child labour. To be truly impactful, however, related support measures should be embedded in broader strategies to enable agricultural productivity growth and improve livelihoods of poor rural households.

× Although women’s empowerment and gender equality are often linked with better maternal and child nutrition outcomes, recent systematic reviews find inconclusive evidence. This paper applies a comparable methodology to data on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), an internationally-validated measure based on interviews of women and men within the same household, from six countries in Africa and Asia to identify which dimensions of women’s empowerment are related to household-, woman-, and child-level dietary and nutrition outcomes. We examine relationships between women’s empowerment and household-level dietary diversity; women’s dietary diversity and BMI; and child-related outcomes, controlling for woman, child, and household characteristics. We also test for differential associations of women’s empowerment with nutrition outcomes for boys and girls. We find few significant associations between the aggregate empowerment scores and nutritional outcomes. The women’s empowerment score is positively associated only with child HAZ, while lower intrahousehold inequality is associated with a higher likelihood of exclusive breastfeeding and higher HAZ but with lower BMI. However, analysis of the subdomain indicators finds more significant associations, suggesting that tradeoffs exist among different dimensions of empowerment. Women’s empowerment accounts for a small share of the variance in nutritional outcomes, with household wealth and country-level factors accounting for the largest share of the variation in household and women’s dietary diversity. In contrast, most of the variation in child outcomes comes from child age. Improving nutritional outcomes requires addressing the underlying determinants of poor nutrition in addition to empowering women and improving gender equality.

× The quality of agricultural products can affect both farm incomes and the healthfulness of farm families’ diets. However, many quality attributes are difficult to observe, making it difficult for farmers to learn how to improve the quality of their crops. Lack of premium pass-through and the cost of quality-enhancing inputs are additional barriers to improving output quality. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of each of these barriers to smallholder adoption of technologies for reducing aflatoxin, a common food safety hazard. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in northern Ghana over the course of two seasons to test how three interventions affect adoption of practices that reduce aflatoxin risk as well as aflatoxin levels in groundnuts: (1) training on aflatoxin and its prevention, (2) distribution of free drying sheets, and (3) a price premium for groundnuts that comply with aflatoxin regulations. We find that training farmers substantially improves post-harvest practices. Drying sheet distribution and, to a lesser extent, the premium price offer lead to further improvements, including crowding-in of non-subsidized practices. We find substantial corresponding decreases in aflatoxin levels from drying sheet provision in the study region with high background aflatoxin levels. Impacts are stronger for households with higher aflatoxin at baseline, more members, and young children.

× Malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a massive global challenge, and the past decade has seen a growing political attention to addressing malnutrition in different contexts. What has been largely missing so far, and is in growing demand from countries, is tangible, practical and rigorous insights and lessons (from other countries or contexts) on how to translate this burgeoning political momentum into effective policies and programme implementation strategies – and ultimately impact on the ground. This new climate of learning from experience and evidence led to the launch in 2015 of the Stories of Change initiative. This series presents a second wave of studies from six countries (Tanzania, Rwanda, Vietnam, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria,) and three Indian states (Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu). These provide clear evidence combined with compelling narratives on what drives success in addressing all forms of malnutrition – evidence that is necessary for turning global momentum into actual results on the ground. This introductory Opinion is published with the first set of papers. It will be followed by a thorough synthesis of papers as a conclusion of the Series. We hope that the lessons embedded in these Stories of Change will inform and inspire the deliberations and outcomes of the UN Food Systems Summit and the second Nutrition for Growth Summit to be held this year, and the actions of those in the global food and nutrition system working for positive change.

× CONTEXT
The accessibility and availability of forages is a common concern in crop-livestock systems in West Africa; however, options to increase forage production may entail trade-offs within the farm system that can be challenging to quantify explicitly.
OBJECTIVE
This study examined how maize (Zea mays L.) leaf stripping affected maize and sheep productivity and associated labour requirements, and farm system trade-offs and synergies in four communities in the Northern Region of Ghana.
METHODS
Maize leaf stripping involved removing almost senesced leaves from maize plants below the cob level at silking. We combined data from three sources: on-farm maize trials with 28 farmers from two seasons (2017 and 2018), on-farm sheep feeding trials where the pasture-based diets of weaner sheep were supplemented with stripped maize leaves fed in pens (conducted in 2019), and farm survey data from 117 households (conducted in 2014), seven of which were in the on-farm maize trials and owned sheep. We examined the trial data using linear mixed-effects models.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Maize leaf stripping had no significant effect on maize grain yield but had a significant positive effect on maize forage protein yield from leaf and stover. Offering maize leaves to weaner sheep had a significant positive effect on average daily liveweight gain, estimated marginal mean was 29.3 g with maize leaves and −10.9 g without maize leaves. For the maize-sheep systems of the seven households, non-inferential statistics suggested that on average maize leaf stripping reduced total maize grain production by 12% (range −46 to 38) and increased maize forage protein production from leaf and stover by 90% (range −16 to 298). Stripping the maize leaves from one hectare of land took an extra 34 h (range 27 to 42) of labour, which was counterbalanced by reduced labour time for grazing as sheep were fed the maize leaves in pens. For the 117 farmers, heterogeneity in maize areas planted and livestock numbers resulted in heterogeneous production and labour effects of maize leaf stripping. Farmers qualitatively described how maize leaf stripping released labour so children could spend more time at school rather than shepherding.
SIGNIFICANCE
We quantified in northern Ghana how maize leaf stripping altered crop and livestock productivity and associated trade-offs and synergies in the farm system, including labour. Changes in crop management often have implications beyond the crop's field and examining these implications can provide insights into the suitability of alternative farm management options.

× Effective policy requires an accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities. The data for this evidence is often generated via lengthy surveys where designated respondents provide information about their household members. This burden on respondents may lead to both losses and biases as they grow fatigued during the interview. We test these hypotheses with an experiment in rural Ghana where we randomize individual household members’ position in the labor module. We find that moving a household member back by one position reduces their reported number of productive activities by 2.2% with average aggregate losses of 7.9%, or approximately one out of every twelve activities. Losses for women and youth are closer to one in nine. These biases result from both differential exposure to response fatigue (being positioned later in rosters) and differential vulnerability (greater impacts conditional on position). These results have important implications for data quality across many settings and topics.

× This study analyzed the impact of adoption of artificial pollination on productivity, income, poverty and food security among cocoa farmers in Ghana. Primary data was collected from 206 cocoa farmers drawn through a multi-stage sampling technique and analyzed using Propensity Score Matching. The study revealed that households who adopted artificial pollination had improvements in their productivity, income, poverty situation, and food security. It was also revealed that adopters increased their productivity by close to 15.34% on average, earned between GH₵ 2756.84 to GH₵ 11074.38 more on average in terms of income, reduced their poverty by an average of between 0.83% and 3.53%, and finally, improved their food security by approximately 3% compared to non-adopters. Leveraging on the positive impact of adoption of artificial pollination, policymakers should take steps in implementing artificial pollination to help increase the yield of Ghana’s cocoa.

× We adopt the newly redefined marginal treatment effect (MTE) framework to examine how farmers' resource endowment and unobserved factors affect the marginal benefit of adopting sustainable intensification of agricultural practices (SI practices), estimate the average and the marginal benefits of adopting the SI practices, and identify the farm households at the margin of participation that need to be targeted during scaling-up. Findings show that farmers’ unobserved factors and resource endowment influence the marginal benefit of adopting SI practices. Point estimates indicate that the adoption of SI practices increases the maize yield and net returns of adopters. Estimates further reveal that the average benefit for adopters differ from the marginal benefit for new farmers at the margin of participation. Finally, our findings suggest that not all farm households at the marginal entrants would benefit from all the potential scaling-up policy options, except households who by socio-economic characteristics appear least likely to adopt. We conclude that these households should be targeted to enhance adoption as well as maximize the return on investment during scaling-up of the SI practices

× The FAO-IFPRI study, of which this policy brief is a summary, focuses on the use of tractors because they are among the most versatile farm mechanization tools and are universal power sources for all other driven implements and equipment in agriculture, with significant potential to replace animal draught power and human power, including children’s muscle power. Tractor use is typically also the first type of machine-powered equipment in use at lower levels of agricultural development, the context where most child labour is found. Mechanization is mostly assumed to reduce child labour, as it is expected to be labour saving in general. Yet, this is not always the case, as it has also been observed that the use of tractors and other machinery could increase children’s engagement in farm activities. This may be the case if, for instance, their use allows farms to cultivate larger areas, or if it leads to shifting chores of work from hired labor to family workers, e.g. for weeding edges of farmland not reachable by machinery. Evidence has been scant thus far, but the few available studies have mostly lent greater support to the hypothesis that mechanization reduces children’s productive engagement. Most available studies have focused on specific cases and based on scant data. The new FAO-IFPRI study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment for seven developing countries in Asia (India, Nepal and Viet Nam) and sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania) based on comparable farm household survey data.

× Our paper seeks to identify factors that inhibit and promote women’s success in seed businesses, through three case studies of women’s and men’s entrepreneurship across varying seed-related value chains and country contexts in Africa south of the Sahara. The cases include chicken seed dissemination in Ethiopia and Tanzania, tilapia seed production in Ghana, and marketing and trading of improved maize and sorghum seeds in Kenya. Applying a gender lens, we use qualitative methods to analyze women’s and men’s motivations to engage in seed businesses, the challenges they confront to start and succeed, and prospects for sustainability and continued success. We also use quantitative data to characterize the levels of empowerment of the entrepreneurs sampled. Results show that time flexibility and profitability of the business can be important considerations for women’s engagement in seed entrepreneurship, and the social normative context of the sector is also critical. Furthermore, outside support can be a key factor influencing women’s seed entrepreneurship, per the Kenya case.

× With the widespread growth of mobile phone coverage and adoption over the past decade, there has been considerable enthusiasm over the potential for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to provide a low-cost approach for farmers to overcome information constraints in agricultural initiatives. The commercial viability of ICTs relies on effective demand for these services. This paper assesses farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a digital platform that provides nutrition-sensitive agricultural information in Ghana. Using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak method to elicit WTP, we randomly vary the framing of the marketing messages for the service, as well as the gender of the person targeted, to examine the effects of framing and respondent gender on demand. We find that farmers are highly price sensitive, but most are willing to pay a low monthly price for the service. A nutrition-focused marketing message leads to higher WTP than an agriculture only message, and women have substantially lower WTP than men, with the latter difference driven by lower WTP for the service among women who report access to alternative sources of nutrition, health, and agriculture information.

× Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.

× This study examines interventions in two agricultural development projects in Ghana which aimed to build competitiveness of selected value chains to generate growth and reduce poverty – the Northern Rural Growth Project, implemented between 2009 and 2016, and the Market Oriented Agriculture Programme, which began in 2004 and is still in place. These projects aimed to sustainably increase rural households’ income through the development of inclusive and profitable agricultural commodity and food value chains to generate agricultural surpluses and to benefit from improved access to remunerative markets.
In this study, the efficacy of four sorts of value chain interventions implemented by the two projects are examined in the context of the strengthening maize, pineapple, mango, and citrus value chains:
• Facilitating interactions among value chain actors to encourage technical and institutional innovations,
• Improving the operations of individual actors, such as producers, service providers, traders, and processors;
• Helping develop new services for producers or initiating new producer institutions; and
• Improving infrastructure.
The study sought to identify how, where, and when might it be appropriate to intervene in value chains, particularly to benefit smallholders. While the lessons from this study do not comprehensively answer these questions, a better understanding is provided on the reasons behind the outcomes the projects attained in seeking to strengthen agricultural commodity value chains and some guidance is offered on how interventions aimed at doing so should be designed.

× Tomatoes are a key component in the diets of Ghanaian households. Approximately 440,000 tons of tomato are consumed annually, equivalent to 40 percent of household vegetable expenditure (Van Asselt et al. 2018). Despite government support for the sector, national production has not increased much in the last decade, resulting in domestic supply falling far short of demand. While UN Comtrade (2019) trade statistics for 2007 to 2017 indicate that the country imported only around 8,000 tons of tomato annually, mainly from neighboring Burkina Faso, Van Asselt et al. (2018) put this figure at closer to 100,000 tons or one-quarter of domestic supply. Evidently, large quantities of tomato enter the country informally, making it difficult to estimate actual supply and demand patterns and devise appropriate marketing policies. The perishability of tomato is a major challenge and imparts significant risk on producers and traders. As such, post-harvest handling, transport, storage, and processing losses have been estimated at between 20 and 65 percent of production (Vowotor et al. 2012).

× Maize is a widely consumed and cultivated staple crop in Ghana. It accounts for more than one-quarter of calories consumed, about double that of the second crop, cassava (GSS 2018). About three-quarters of maize consumption is from own production, suggesting maize has limited appeal as a cash crop (Gage et al. 2012). This is set to change as Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, launched in 2017, prioritizes maize seed and fertilizer distribution and encourages market participation by smallholders (MoFA 2019). Already average maize output over the period 2017 to 2019 has been 40 percent higher than the average output achieved between 2013 and 2016 (MoFA 2020a). Government attributes this dramatic production response to PFJ. It is uncertain whether the maize market in Ghana can absorb increased this increased maize output without significant impacts on market prices or the profitability of maize cultivation.

× Rice is an important staple in Ghana and is cultivated across all agroecological zones. Paddy rice output grew at around 10 percent per annum between 2008 and 2019, with an especially sharp increase of 25 percent in 2019. However, domestic production continues to fall short of demand with the import share of rice consumed remaining above 50 percent (MoFA 2018). This reflects a growing preference for rice among Ghanaian households, especially as consumers become wealthier and more urbanized. The large dependence on rice imports heightens concerns around foreign exchange imbalances and vulnerability to international rice price shocks. Hence, the National Rice Development Strategy of 2009 and the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) campaign launched in 2017 not only prioritize rice but set ambitious expansion targets for domestic rice production (MOFA 2017a). Policy objectives include substituting rice imports and producing a higher-quality product that is more acceptable to Ghanaian consumers and can compete with imported rice.

× Chili pepper (Capsicum spp.) is an important spice and condiment used in many Ghanaian dishes. Alongside tomato and onion, chili ranks as one of Ghana’s three most important vegetable crops in terms of hectarage and crop value with significant potential for generating income, creating jobs, and contributing to foreign exchange through exports (Gonzalez et al. 2014). As is the case with other vegetable crops, chili production in Ghana is more profitable than producing traditional staple crops, such as maize and rice (Van Asselt et al. 2018). However, supply is highly seasonal as most production is rainfed. Chili yields in Ghana are also well below their potential. The government of Ghana has recognized this underexploited potential by designating chili as a priority crop under the Planting for Food Jobs (PFJ) initiative.

× Although women’s empowerment and gender equality are associated with better maternal and child nutrition outcomes, recent systematic reviews find inconclusive evidence. This paper applies a comparable methodology to data on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a recent internationally-validated measure based on interviews of women and men within the same household, from six countries in Africa and Asia to identify which dimensions of women’s empowerment are related to household-, women-, and child-level dietary and nutrition outcomes. We examine the relationship between women’s empowerment and household-level food security and dietary diversity; women’s dietary diversity and BMI; and child-related outcomes, controlling for woman, child, and household characteristics. We also test whether women’s empowerment has differential associations for boys and girls. We do not find consistent associations between dimensions of empowerment and food security and nutrition outcomes across countries, but some patterns emerge. Overall empowerment scores are more strongly associated with nutritional outcomes in the South Asian countries in our sample compared to the African ones. Where significant, greater intrahousehold gender equality is associated with better nutritional outcomes. However, different domains have different associations with nutritional outcomes, suggesting that tradeoffs exist: higher workloads are associated with more diverse diets but lower women’s BMI and child anthropometric outcomes. Identifying the overlap between the top contributors to disempowerment and those most strongly related to nutrition outcomes can inform the design and implementation of nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs.

× Conservation agriculture techniques can increase agricultural production while decreasing CO2 emissions, yet adoption in the developing world remains low—in part because many years of continuous adoption may be required to realize gains in production. We conduct a framed field experiment in northern Ghana to study how randomly assigned incentives and peer information may affect adoption. Incentives increase adoption, both while they are available and after withdrawal. There is no overall effect of peer information, but we do find evidence that information about long-term adoption increased adoption, particularly when that information shows that production gains have been achieved.

× The objective in this paper is to estimate the economic costs of COVID-19 policies and external shocks in a developing country context, with a focus on agri-food system impacts. Ghana is selected as a case study. Ghana recorded its first two cases of COVID-19 infection on 12 March 2020. The government responded by gradually introducing social distancing measures, travel restrictions, border closures, and eventually a partial, two-week “partial” lockdown in the country’s largest metropolitan areas of Accra and Kumasi. Social distancing measures have been enforced nationwide and include bans on conferences, workshops, and sporting and religious events, as well as the closure of bars and nightclubs. All educational institutions are also closed. The partial lockdown measures in urban areas directed all residents to remain home except for essential business, prohibited non-essential inter-city travel and transport, and only essential manufacturing and services operations were permitted to continue (The Presidency 2020). At the time the lockdown was announced, Ghana’s Ministry of Finance revised its GDP growth estimate for 2020 downwards from 6.8 to 1.5 percent (MoF 2020), although the Minister warned that growth could fall further if lockdown measures were extended. The lockdown was initially extended for a third week but was officially lifted on 20 April. Social distancing measures remain in place nationwide, although a gradual easing of restrictions commenced in June. Ghana’s borders remain closed at the time of writing.

× Over the past decade, the aquaculture sector in Ghana has experienced tremendous growth—driven mainly by large-scale cage farms—but it has been unclear how the rural poor have shared in this growth. A research project has been initiated to help diagnose, design, and test interventions for better inclusion of the rural poor, women, and youth in the tilapia value chain. This report describes the baseline data on 603 small-scale tilapia farmers in Ghana. The data collected during two-hour face-to-face interviews during May–July 2019 are disaggregated by socioeconomic indicators, gender, and age group. Baseline data show that 9 percent of farm managers and owners were women, and an additional 9 percent of farms engaged women in some decision-making. Moreover, women contributed 16 percent of family labor and 5 percent of hired labor on farms. Youth represented 14 and 24 percent of owners and managers, respectively, but contributed 68 percent of the total family and hired labor on farms. A large majority of managers and owners had at least high school education, with a third of owners and a quarter of managers attaining at least a college degree. In Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions especially, most farmers engaged mainly in crop farming and non-farm businesses as their main livelihood, with fish farming as a small contributor to overall household income and livelihood. Farmers in all regions had poor record-keeping and management practices and low compliance with sanitation, fish health, and food safety standards. A wide variety of input usage, management practices, and performance was observed among fish farms. As a result, the profitability of fish farms was also wide-ranging, between –12.00 and 46.00 cedi per m2, with an average of 8.82 cedi per m2. Despite wide variability in production and profits, the majority of farmers experienced positive profits. On average, a farmer received a profit of 2.4 cedi per kilogram of tilapia produced or a 27 percent profit margin. These encouraging figures indicate that farmers who adopt good aquaculture practices can achieve respectable profits.

× How do cities build a social contract with their diverse constituencies and foster political trust among the urban poor? This study focuses on informal traders, who constitute a major source of food security and employment in urban Africa. Centered on Ghana’s three main cities, we analyze interviews with metropolitan policymakers and a survey of approximately 1,200 informal traders. The findings show that expectations about reciprocity and procedural justice play a key role in shaping the probability of trusting one’s local government. Lower levels of trust were associated with disappointment over the lack of benefits that accompany tax payments to local assemblies. Moreover, those who had experienced harassment by city authorities were less likely to trust their local government. The analysis demonstrates that political trust at the subnational level deserves greater empirical attention, especially as countries continue to deepen decentralization initiatives and cities strive to meet global development goals around inclusivity.

× This report is the final outcome of various knowledge products and training material, usually labelled as “printed eAtlas”, which have been developed and shared with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) under the Voice for Change Partnership (V4CP) programme.

× Over the past decade, Ghana’s tilapia farming has experienced tremendous growth in production; however, much of the growth has been driven by large-scale cage farmers around Lake Volta. It remains unclear how this growth is and can be made more inclusive of poor and young women and men. This study was conducted to analyze different inclusive business models along the fish seed value chain that can potentially be implemented in Ghana. Based on literature review, field interviews, analysis of survey data, and stakeholder workshops, this study develops four business model prototypes for seed multiplication and distribution to increase farmers’ access to and use of quality tilapia seed: (1) Nursery , which buy fish fry from a reliable hatchery, transport them to locations near other farmers, and grow it to a larger size; (2) Local feed mill, with pelleting machine and technical knowledge to advise on feed formulation; (3) Agents, technical experts who supply fingerlings, handle transport and marketing, and provide technical advice; and (4) Local hatchery, which obtains brood stock from a reliable source, produces local fingerlings to sell to nearby farmers, and provides technical support. Initial ex ante financial and profitability analyses were undertaken and will be refined according to the actual context in the particular district where the sensitization and pilot-testing will take place. These business models have the potential not only to increase farmers’ access to and use of quality tilapia seed but also to provide livelihood and income generation along the fish seed value chain.

× In the past decade, Ghana has seen a significant reduction in stunting among children under five years of age. However, anemia only declined marginally over the same period, with the result that the rate of child anemia continues to be a severe public health emergency. These changes occurred within a socioeconomic context considered favorable for nutrition outcomes, marked by expansion and diversification of the economy, and investments in key infrastructure, healthcare, education, and water and sanitation. The Stories of Change in Nutrition study in Ghana aimed to better understand the changes in stunting and anemia between 2009 and 2018, as well as the potential drivers of these changes. Such findings can be used to inform agendasetting, implementation of existing policies, and future planning at national and subnational levels in Ghana. This study’s findings are important because both stunting and anemia are linked to significant adverse health and well-being impacts, particularly in low-income settings [1], and are listed among the global targets for nutrition for 2025 agreed by national ministers of health (including Ghana’s) at the World Health Assembly.

× Aflatoxin contamination of several crops is common in tropical and subtropical regions. Maize and groundnut, staples for billions of people, are among the most susceptible to contamination, primarily caused by the fungus Aspergillus flavus. Globally, an estimated 25 percent of aflatoxin-prone crops are contaminated with aflatoxins and/or other mycotoxins. Depending on the dose and exposure period, these toxins can cause severe health detriments in humans and animals. Farmers producing contaminated crops cannot sell to premium markets, including export markets.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× Rapid urbanization in Africa south of the Sahara continues to highlight the importance of informal retailers as a source of both food and employment for the urban poor. The most recent Africa Agriculture Status Report emphasizes that, due to demographic and socioeconomic transformation in the region, the center of gravity of Africa’s food system is shifting to urban areas (AGRA, 2020). Informal retailers—including those who vend in open-air wet markets and hawk on pavements and streets—provide a critical link between agricultural producers and consumers. While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of this constituency (Resnick et al., 2020), informal traders have long been victims of other public health, economic, and climate shocks (Battersby & Watson, 2019). To build the resilience of informal traders and enhance their contributions to urban food security, fundamental governance issues need to be addressed. This brief synthesizes research on informal traders conducted under the “Economywide Factors Affecting Agricultural Growth and Rural Transformation” flagship of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by IFPRI. The research spanned Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia and involved comparative analysis across capital cities based on media events data, surveys with traders, and interviews with urban bureaucrats. In this way, traders’ experiences could be complemented with policymakers’ insights about bottlenecks and opportunities for reform

× With support from PIM and USAID, researchers from IFPRI and CIMMYT together with Ghana government officials conducted a qualitative assessment of the Ghana Agricultural Mechanization Service Enterprise Centers (AMSECs) program. The recommendations from the study were used to improve the program’s inclusiveness and efficiency.

× Soya bean is an important legume that is both a valuable source of feed for livestock and fish and a good source of protein in human diets. The bean contains around 30 percent cholesterol free oil, 40 percent protein, and essential vitamins (El Agroudy et al. 2011). The soya bean industry provides numerous opportunities for value chain actors from seed and grain production through to processing and marketing. As such, growth and modernization of the soya bean sector has potential to improve livelihoods and reduce poverty. While industrial processing and utilization of soya bean has expanded in Ghana, domestic production has not kept up with demand, resulting in significant growth in imports. Currently around half of soya beans or soya bean products is imported (Eshun et al. 2018; Gage et al. 2012). Average soya bean crop yields are low, ranging from 0.7 to 1.7 metric tons per hectare depending on variety, the environment, and management practices used (SRID 2017).

× Onion is a common vegetable crop used globally as seasoning and for medicinal purposes (van der Meer 1997; Cheema et al. 2003). The bulb is also used widely in Ghana in the preparation of stews and soups, accounting for around one-fifth of vegetable expenditure by households (van Asselt et al. 2018). Despite being widely consumed, onion production in Ghana falls well short of demand with imports coming in from neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso even during the peak local production season. Although trade statistics are notoriously weak, some estimates suggest as much as 80 to 90 percent of onion in the local market is imported. The two main varieties cultivated in Ghana are Bawku Red and Galmi. Major production challenges include varietal issues, the seasonal nature of production, and high post-harvest losses. The importance of onion and the significant potential for growth in the subsector has long since been recognized, and the crop was one of the first to be prioritized under Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program.

× Irrigated agriculture can support food and nutrition security, increase rural employment and incomes and can act as a buffer against growing climate variability and change. However, irrigation development has been slow in Africa south of the Sahara and Ghana is no exception. Out of a total potential irrigated area of close to 2 million ha, less than 20,000 ha large-scale irrigation and less than 200,000 ha of small-scale irrigation have been developed; but the latter is only an estimate. To identify entry points for accelerating small-scale irrigation development in Ghana, a national and a regional stakeholder Net-Map workshop were held in Accra and Tamale, respectively. The workshops suggest that a wide variety of actors from government, the private sector, international organizations and funders, research organizations and NGOs are involved in the diffusion of small-scale irrigation technologies. However, there are important differences between actors perceived to be key at the national and at the regional levels in northern Ghana. At the national level, diffusion of small-scale irrigation technologies is considered to be largely influenced by the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority together with a series of private sector actors focused on importation, distribution and financing of technologies. Farmers are considered to have no influence over the diffusion of small-scale irrigation, suggesting that small-scale irrigation is largely considered a supply-driven process. In northern Ghana, on the other hand, farmers are considered to be key influencers, although participants noted that much of this was potential influence, together with a larger and more diversified set of government stakeholders that are seen as regulators and possibly gatekeepers. For irrigation diffusion to successfully move from importation to distribution to benefiting smallholder farmers, all of these actors have to come together to better understand farmers’ needs and challenges. A multi-stakeholder platform could help to increase communication between farmers as the ultimate beneficiaries of small-scale irrigation technologies and the many other actors interested in supporting this process.

× Accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities is needed to inform effective policy. Existing evidence relies heavily on studies that use designated respondents to provide information about their household members, imposing significant costs on these respondents along with possible distortions in the data. In rural Ghana, we randomize the order that household members are asked about and estimate that response fatigue leads to undercounting of labor activities by 8% on average. Women are twice as impacted as men while youth are four times as impacted as older adults, distorting both within-household and population wide comparisons. These biases result from women and youth being listed systematically later in rosters and stronger effects of fatigue for them, conditional on roster position. The implications of our results extend to other topics of enquiry as well, wherever similar repetitive survey structures are deployed, such as birth records, plot-level inputs, and household consumption and expenditures.

× We study the validity of experimental methods designed to measure preferences for intra-household resource control among spouses in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks; (1) a game that measures willingness to pay to control resources, and (2) private and joint dictator games that measure preferences for resource allocation and the extent to which those preferences are reflected in joint decisions. Behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they describe similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda the experimental measures are robustly correlated with a range of household survey measures of resource control and women’s empowerment and suggest that simple private dictator games may be as informative as more sophisticated tasks. In Ghana, the experimental measures are not predictive of survey indicators, suggesting that context may be an important element of whether experimental measures are informative.

× Globally, food system transformation is characterized by the increasing importance of food safety and quality standards for consumers. This trend is challenging for the food processing sector in Ghana, which is dominated by micro and small firms. This study investigates the factors influencing the adoption of food safety practices and the effect of such adoption on the profitability of nationally representative food processing firms in Ghana using instrumental variable approach and matching techniques. The study uses nationally representative data for 511 food processing firms. The data show few food processing firms (20 percent) have adopted food safety practices. Wide diversity of firms was observed, and firm size, firm age, registrations, trainings, processing activities, types of buyers, and number of distinct products explain the differing firm adoption of food safety practices. We also find that adopters of food safety practices earn more per month than do nonadopting firms, implying the presence of economic incentive to adopt food safety practices. Support in terms of food safety awareness and training to food processing firms can help improve adoption of food safety practices.

× Au cours de la dernière décennie, le Ghana a enregistré une importante baisse des cas de retard de croissance chez les enfants de moins de cinq ans. Pendant ce temps, le recul de l’anémie durant la même période n’a été que marginal, il en résulte que les taux d’anémie infantile demeurent une grave urgence de santé publique [1]. Ces changements se sont produits dans un contexte socio-économique considéré comme favorable aux résultats de la nutrition, marqués par l’expansion et la diversification de l’économie et des investissements dans les infrastructures clés, les soins de santé, l’éducation, l’eau et l’assainissement. L’étude des Histoires de changement en nutrition au Ghana a pour but de permettre une meilleure compréhension des changements observés, entre 2009 et 2018, par rapport au retard de croissance et à l’anémie, ainsique des éventuels moteurs de ces changements. Ces constatations peuvent être utilisées pour l’élaboration des programmes, la mise en œuvre des politiques existantes et les prochains exercices de planification aux niveaux national et infranational au Ghana. Les conclusions de l’étude sont importantes parce que le retard de croissance et l’anémie ont tous d’importants impacts négatifs sur la santé et le bienêtre, en particulier ceux des milieux à faibles revenus [1], et sont classés parmi les cibles mondiales de la nutrition pour 2025, approuvées par les ministères nationaux de la santé (y compris celui du Ghana) lors de l’Assemblée mondiale de la santé[2].

× Many smallholder farmers in developing countries grow multiple crop species on their farms, maintaining de facto crop diversity. Rarely do agricultural development strategies consider this crop diversity as an entry point for fostering agricultural innovation. This paper presents a case study, from an agricultural research-for-development project in northern Ghana, which examines the relationship between crop diversity and self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold by smallholder farmers in the target areas. By testing the presence and direction of these relationships, it is possible to assess whether smallholder farmers may benefit more from a diversification or a specialization agricultural development strategy for improving their livelihoods. Based on a household survey of 637 randomly selected households, we calculated crop diversity as well as its contribution to self-consumption (measured as imputed monetary value) and to cash income for each household. With these data we estimated a system of three simultaneous equations. Results show that households maintained high levels of crop diversity: up to eight crops grown, with an-average of 3.2 per household, and with less than 5% having a null or very low level of crop diversity. The value of crop species used for self-consumption was on average 55% higher than that of crop sales. Regression results show that crop diversity is positively associated with self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold. This finding suggests that increasing crop diversity opens market opportunities for households, while still contributing to self-consumption. Given these findings, crop diversification seems to be more beneficial to these farmers than specialization. For these diversified farmers, or others in similar contexts, interventions that assess and build on their de facto crop diversity are probably more likely to be successful.

× In the existing literature, the effects of contract farming on household welfare were examined with mixed results. Most studies looked at single contract types. This paper contributes to the literature by comparing two types of contracts – simple marketing contracts and resource providing contracts – in the Ghanaian oil palm sector. We investigate the effects of both contracts on farm income, as well as spillovers on other household income sources. We use survey data collected with an innovative sampling design and a control function approach to address possible issues of endogeneity. Both contracts lead to large positive effects on total household income in a similar magnitude, yet through quite different mechanisms. Farmers under the marketing contract use the increase in oil palm profits to transition out of agricultural production and into off-farm employment. Farmers under the resource-providing contract have a stronger dependency on income from oil palm, which is considerably more profitable under the contract. The findings underline that contract characteristics matter for the effects and that disaggregated analysis of different income sources is important to understand the underlying mechanisms.

× The urban population in Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to expand by nearly 800 million people in the next 30 years. How this rapid urban transition is affecting household-level urban food security, and reverberating into broader food systems, is poorly understood. To fill this gap, we use data from a 2017 survey (n = 668) of low- and middle-income residents of Accra, Ghana, to characterize and compare the predictors of household-level food security using three established metrics: the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS); the Household Food Insecurity Access Prevalence (HFIAP); and the Food Consumption Score (FCS). According to HFIAP, 70% of sampled households are food insecure, but only 2% fall below acceptable thresholds measured by FCS. Only one household reported sourcing food from modern supermarkets and fewer than 3% produce food for consumption through gardening, farming, or fishing. Instead, households rely on purchased food from traditional markets, local stalls and kiosks, and street hawkers. Results from a suite of general linear models show that household assets, education, and demographic characteristics are significantly associated with food security outcomes according to HFIAS and HFIAP. The poor correlation and weak model agreement between dietary recall such as FCS, and experience-based food security metrics, like HFIAS and HFIAP, highlight limitations of employing historically rural-centric food security measurement approaches within the urban context. Given that Sub-Saharan Africa’s future is urban, our results add empirical evidence in support of the growing chorus of scholars advocating for comprehensive urban-oriented food security research and policy agendas across Sub-Saharan Africa.

× More than 20 million young people, aged 15-24 years, join the workforce in Africa south of the Sahara every year. These young job seekers will need to find work in today’s more competitive global economy, and not everyone thinks they will be successful.

× This manual provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to pond aquaculture. It includes tips on site selection, site preparation, pond design and construction, farming practices (pond preparation, stocking, and feeding), biosecurity and fish health management, harvesting and marketing and recordkeeping - all of which are critical elements of a successful tilapia pond aqua-farming business operation. Aquaculture has existed in Ghana since the 1950s, though the sector didn’t experience major growth until around 2000, when large-scale commercial production began. Today, it plays a key role in the nation’s prosperity, contributing to food security by augmenting domestic fish production and creating jobs. Even so, challenges that have historically plagued the sector and hindered growth remain pervasive. These include low technical know-how and a lack of quality inputs such as seed and feed. Although knowledge in the sector has increased over the years, small-scale farmers (most of whom are indigenous) continue to struggle with basic farming practices. As a result, they’re often faced with poor yields, which can ultimately lead to a farm’s collapse. The Tilapia Seed Project is aimed at accelerating quality tilapia seed production and dissemination in Ghana. Project stakeholders produced this manual to provide accurate direction to small-scale fish farmers in Ghana. After reviewing its contents, we expect that it will prove instrumental in helping farmers improve production, and that it will serve as a valuable catalyst for growth in this important sector.

× This manual provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to running a tilapia hatchery operation. It includes advice on site selection, site preparation, hatchery design and construction, farming practices (broodstock management, spawning, sex reversal, hormonal feed preparation and feeding), fingerling harvesting and marketing, biosecurity and fish health management, good farm management practices and recordkeeping - all of which are critical elements of a successful tilapia hatchery operation.

× This manual provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to cage aquaculture. It includes tips on site selection, site preparation, cage design and construction, farming practices (cage preparation, stocking, feeding), biosecurity and fish health management, harvesting and marketing and recordkeeping – all of which are critical elements of a successful tilapia cage farming business operation.
Aquaculture has existed in Ghana since the 1950s, though the sector didn’t experience major growth until around 2000, when large-scale commercial production began. Today, it plays a key role in the nation’s prosperity, contributing to food security by augmenting domestic fish production and creating jobs. Even so, challenges that have historically plagued the sector and hindered growth remain pervasive. These include low technical know-how and a lack of quality inputs such as seed and feed. Although knowledge in the sector has increased over the years, small-scale farmers (most of whom are indigenous) continue to struggle with basic farming practices. As a result, they’re often faced with poor yields, which can ultimately lead to a farm’s collapse. The Tilapia Seed Project is aimed at accelerating quality tilapia seed production and dissemination in Ghana. Project stakeholders produced this manual to provide accurate direction to small-scale fish farmers in Ghana. After reviewing its contents, we expect that it will prove instrumental in helping farmers improve production, and that it will serve as a valuable catalyst for growth in this important sector.

× mNutrition was a five-year global initiative supported by the Department for International Development (DFID) between 2013 and 2018, organised by GSMA and implemented by in-country mobile network operators (MNOs) and other providers. The evaluation was carried out by a consortium of researchers from Gamos, the Institute of Development Studies, and the International Food Policy Research Institute. This briefing summarises key evaluation findings and presents lessons learned on three key topics: 1. The design and implementation of mobile phone-based information services to promote behaviour change; 2. Building a commercially viable business model for mobile phone-based information services; and 3. Evaluating mobile phone-based information services.

× 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.

× Recent agricultural transformation in Asia and Africa has witnessed the gradual spread of mechanization in agricultural areas that are still largely made up of smallholder farming. While the literature has often characterized mechanical technologies as being complementary to land, knowledge gaps exist with regard to the process of adoption of mechanization by smallholders for whom the scope for exploiting its complementarity with land is limited. We test a hypothesis that yield-enhancing biological technologies—which potentially raise total factor productivity and returns to more intensive farm-power use—are important drivers of the adoption of agricultural mechanization among smallholders. To enhance the external validity of evidence, we empirically analyze this hypothesis by applying the same methodologies in two countries, lowland (Terai) Nepal and Ghana. We employ nationally representative, repeated, cross-sectional data from both countries, as well as unique tractor-use data from Ghana; we also employ multidimensional indicators of agroclimatic similarity in the respective plant breeding locations. We show that in both lowland Nepal and Ghana, the adoption of tractors and agricultural equipment has been induced by yield-enhancing biological technologies, particularly improved varieties and high-yielding production systems, when these biological technologies are instrumented by agroclimatic similarity to plant breeding locations, which is measured accounting for the multidimensional characteristics of agroclimatic conditions, and thus proxies spillover potentials of the public sector developed biological technologies. In general, these effects are particularly strong among smaller farms, and the effect holds for the adoption of mechanization both at extensive margins (whether to adopt) and at intensive margins (how much to adopt). In Ghana, partly due to improved efficiency in supply-side factors of mechanization, these linkages have strengthened in the 2010s. The results suggest that in both countries, mechanization support strategies for smallholders can potentially improve their targeting by utilizing the information of agroclimatic similarity with plant breeding locations. In Ghana, further public investments in plant-breeding system in strategic locations may broadly enhance smallholders' demand for mechanization. In lowland Nepal where tractor adoptions have grown fairly high, it is now important to more carefully evaluate the trade-off between smallholder-based growth strategies and other strategies, for example, promoting scale-expansions of farming, which also involves mechanization.

× The sex differences in malnutrition and hypertension during adolescence is largely inconclusive. There is also a paucity of data on the sex-specific correlates of malnutrition and hypertension for adolescents. Hence, this study aimed to assess the association between malnutrition, pre-hypertension/hypertension (PHH) and sex among adolescents. The study also aimed to determine and contrast the factors associated with these risks in Ghana. We analysed data of non-pregnant adolescent girls (n = 857) and adolescent boys (n = 870) aged 15–19 years from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). We modelled the prevalence risk ratio (PRR) of malnutrition and PHH using Cox proportional hazard models. Compared to adolescent girls, boys were more than twice likely to be stunted (PRR = 2.58, 95% C.I (1.77, 3.76)) and underweight (PRR = 2.67, 95% C.I (1.41, 5.09)) but less likely to be overweight/obese (PRR = 0.85, 95% C.I (0.08, 0.29)). Boys were also about twice likely to have PHH (PRR = 1.96, 95% C.I (1.47, 2.59)) compared to their female peers. Girls were more at risk of the detrimental effects of poor education on stunting and PHH. Empowerment index while protective of stunting for girls (PRR = 0.82, 95% C.I (0.67, 0.99)) also increased their risk of overweight/obesity (PRR = 1.31, 95% C.I (1.02, 1.68)). A higher household wealth index (HWI) increased the risk of overweight/obesity for adolescent girls but was protective of stunting and PHH for adolescent boys. Improvement in household water, hygiene, and sanitation (WASH) reduced the risk of stunting by 15% for adolescent boys. Overall, our findings suggest a double-burden of malnutrition with an up-coming non-communicable disease burden for adolescents in Ghana. Our findings may also be highlighting the need to target adolescent boys alongside girls in nutrition and health intervention programmes.

× Globally, countries have resorted to social distancing, travel restrictions and economic lockdowns to reduce transmission of COVID-19. The socioeconomic costs of these blunt measures are expected to be high, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where many live hand-to-mouth and lack social safety nets. Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model results show that Ghana’s urban lockdown, although in force for only three weeks in April 2020, has likely caused GDP to fall by 27.9% during that period, while an additional 3.8 million Ghanaians temporarily became poor. Compared to the government’s revised GDP growth rate of 1.5% for 2020, the model predicts a contraction of 0.6 to 6.3% for 2020, depending on the speed of the recovery. The US$200 million budgeted for Ghana’s Coronavirus Alleviation Program will close only a small part of the estimated US$ 2.3 billion GDP gap between the fast recovery scenario and government’s revised GDP trajectory.

× Consumer demand for food safety is likely to be an important driver of public policies and industry-led efforts to reduce information asymmetry on food attributes and improved food safety. This paper examines the attribute demand for chicken meat and tilapia among 803 shoppers in Accra, Ghana. Freshness is the main attribute demanded by the overwhelming majority of shoppers, followed by food safety, price, taste and size. Consumers are willing to pay price premiums for food safety certifications, i.e., those certified according to Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles or certified as free of antibiotic residue. However, the price premium shoppers are willing to pay for improved food safety vary by shoppers type. A third of tilapia shoppers and half of chicken meat shoppers are classified as food safety conscious shoppers and willing to pay a 10 to 12 percent higher price than noncertified products. In comparison, only a tenth of shoppers are considered to be price conscious and willing to pay a small premium (< 1 percent) for certified safe foods. We also tested an information treatment on the negative health implications of food contamination and its effect on shoppers’ decisions. The information treatment randomly assigned to shoppers was a significant predictor of food safety attribute demand for chicken meat but not for tilapia, which may be linked to greater awareness of and concern about antibiotic misuse in poultry production. Our findings generally point to a concern about food safety and a strong demand and willingness among consumers to pay premiums for certified safe foods, thus providing support for public- or industry-led schemes to provide food safety information to consumers.

× Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women’s empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children’s nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women’s bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children’s nutrition outcomes.

× This paper examines the prospects for import substitution in West Africa by analyzing the preferences of urban consumers for food product attributes. We use market surveys, choice experiments, and experimental auctions to assess price and quality competitiveness of locally-produced chicken, rice, and tilapia in Accra, Ghana. For the price analysis, we compare market prices of imported and local counterparts, and we compare the local costs of production to production costs in major exporting countries. For the quality analysis, we compare consumer perceptions and demand for quality attributes of local versus imported products using data from field experiments with 1,322 consumers. Our findings suggest that among the three products, rice has the lowest prospects for import substitution, due to supply-and demand-side constraints to local competitiveness. For rice, consumers prefer imported products, they perceive imports as having better quality than local products, and they are willing to pay a premium for imports. For chicken, consumers have a strong preference for local products, but the potential for expanding chicken production can only be met if production and processing costs can be reduced significantly to boost price competitiveness. For tilapia, a high preference for freshness provides a natural barrier to import entry, and the comparative advantage of local production can be enhanced by making continuous improvements in seed and extension systems, industry coordination, certification, and regulation.

× The frequency of natural disasters, especially storms and floods, has been increasing globally over the last several decades. Developing countries are especially vulnerable to such disasters but are often the least capable of coping with the associated impacts because of their limited adaptive capacity. Despite the increased interest in strengthening institutional capacity, it remains a challenge for many developing countries. Institutional capacity for disaster management and risk reduction can be built through various mechanisms. One key approach is via the agriculture sector, where climate-resilient agriculture has become an effective tool for adapting to climate change and developing resilience in the long run – resulting in increased capacity for disaster management and risk reduction at the system, institutional, and individual levels. This paper presents the experiences of four countries, which we have evaluated to develop an institutional strengthening framework.

× Land provides the basis for food production and is an indispensable input for economic livelihoods in rural areas. Landownership is strongly associated with social and economic power, not only across communities and households, but also within households. The link between landownership and women’s empowerment has been relatively well documented in general, but not specifically in relation to agriculture. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing how ownership of land is associated with agency and achievements in agriculture among female and male farmers in northern Ghana, a region transitioning from customary land tenure without individual ownership rights towards a more individualized and market-based tenure system. We use a recursive bivariate probit model and focus on eight different indicators in four distinct domains: decisions on agricultural cultivation, decisions on farm income, agricultural association membership, and time allocation. Our empirical estimates indicate that landownership is positively correlated with men’s and women’s agency in agriculture, namely in decisions on agricultural cultivation and membership in agricultural association. Yet, we also find that the gender gaps in participation in cultivation decisions, the use of agricultural earnings, and in agricultural workload continue to persist among those who own land. While the results underscore the importance of land as a resource that can enhance women’s agency, they also point out that policies aiming to solely advance land rights may not be sufficient to eradicate or even reduce gender inequality in agriculture.

× The purpose of this data profile is: 1) To summarize all available primary data sources and secondary data aggregation platforms for key nutrition indicators representative at the national level in Ghana. 2) To assess the identified data sources for each indicator across four dimensions: (i) validity and comparability, (ii) timeliness, (iii) accessibility, and (iv) representativeness. 3) To identify data gaps in the national data system to effectively track progress on nutrition and/or inform policy and program decisions for improving nutrition in Ghana.

× When African leaders launched the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) in Maputo in 2003, they committed to spend 10 percent of their national expenditure budget on the agricultural sector. This commitment, popularly known as the Maputo Declaration, was designed in pursuit of a 6 percent agricultural growth rate each year. The African Union (AU) developed a guidance note on the measure to use to track progress in the commitment on government agriculture expenditure (GAE). The measure is based on the classification of the functions of government (COFOG), and the definition of GAE as the expenses of the government sector on agriculture—crops, livestock, forestry, and fishing and hunting (AU-NEPAD 2015). Specifically, the measure is the share of GAE in government total expenditure (GTE), which is GAE*100/GTE. Two recent agricultural public expenditure reviews (agPERs) conducted in Ghana show expenditure shares that are overestimated for measuring progress toward the Maputo 10 percent target, ranging from 6.5 to 21.2 percent in 2001–2011 (MOFA 2013) and from 5.8 to 7.5 percent in 2012–2015 (MOFA 2017). This is because the studies used concepts like “COFOG-plus” or “enhanced-COFOG” to include expenditures that are not meant to be included according to the AU guidance note. One example of this discrepancy is that the studies included government expenditures on feeder roads in GAE, although feeder roads promote socioeconomic development of entire rural communities and not just the agricultural sector. Also, expenditures of the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) were included in GAE, even though Cocobod, although responsible for the management and development of the cocoa subsector, is not part of the government sector. It is a public corporation that engages in market-based production activities financed entirely by the cocoa subsector that it serves, and there is no transfer from taxpayers through the Cocobod to the entire agricultural sector.2 Along with these inconsistencies with the official AU guidance note, the estimates and analyses in the two agPER studies mask the relatively low government expenditure in the noncocoa subsector, and may undermine efforts to boost provision of public goods and services in this subsector, which accounts for about 90 percent of Ghana’s agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). The cocoa subsector accounts for the remaining 10 percent of agricultural GDP.

× This note first discusses the differences between the general government sector and the public corporations sector, and then presents the rationale for when to add and separate expenditures in the two sectors in the accounting of government expenditures. It then presents revised estimates for Ghana on the share of GAE in GTE from 2001 to 2015, which exclude expenditures of Cocobod and expenditures on nonagricultural functions from GAE, in accordance with the official AU guidance note.2 The formula for this is given by GAE*100/GTE. It proposes another formula for obtaining parallel estimates if the Cocobod expenditures are included in the calcu-lations, as attempted in the agPER studies. This revised formula adds the expenditures of all of Ghana’s public boards and corporations (PBCs) to GTE in the denominator to make it comparable to adding expenditures of Cocobod to GAE in the numerator. The new formula therefore would be (GAE+PBCAE) *100/(GTE+PBCTE), where PBCAE denotes PBCs’ agriculture expenditure and PBCTE denotes PBCs’ total expenditure. The data used are from the two agPERs (MOFA 2013; 2017) and annual reports on the accounts and statements of the government (CAGD 2018), public boards, corporations, and other statutory institutions (AG 2018), and the Co-cobod (Ghana Cocoa Board 2018).

× Growth in Ghana during the last decade has not translated into meaningful benefits for rural households who experienced an increase in poverty in recent years. This reflects, among other factors, the relatively weak performance of the agricultural sector and its general lack of competitiveness. The government has identified agriculture as the backbone of its development strategy and is committed to address the numerous challenges faced by the sector. However, it is likely to encounter fiscal constraints in a postdevelopment assistance era. It is therefore crucial to understand the trade-offs associated with alternative spending strategies. In this study we develop an economywide modeling framework for analyzing returns to public spending in support of agriculture. The model is used to evaluate the effect of compositional shifts in spending given marginal returns to different areas of investment. Our analysis focuses especially on extension services and input subsidies as two important components of the government’s agricultural development strategy. The objective of the study is to advise policymakers on which spending strategy is the most likely to contribute to government’s development goals, such as poverty reduction or economic growth. We find that a doubling of the share of agriculture in total public budget would accelerate agricultural growth to somewhere between 7.6% and 8.6% against the business-as-usual scenario of about 3.5%. The level of growth achieved depends on the types of policies that are favored. In the examples presented here, we show that an input subsidy-oriented spending strategy may yield significant benefits in the short run (1–5 years), and especially in an expansionary fiscal environment, but investments in effective extensive services are more sustainable and rewarding in the medium- to longer-run (6–10 years), especially when public resources are more constrained. These results demonstrate why short-term political goals might result in policy choices that are suboptimal from a longer-term development perspective.

× In 2014, African heads of state reaffirmed their commitment to the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) through the adoption of the Malabo Declaration (AU 2014). The declaration included commitments to reduce hunger and poverty, boost intra-regional trade, enhance resilience to climate variability, and, in line with the Maputo Declaration a decade earlier, to continue allocating to agriculture at least 10 percent of government expenditure. Despite this long-standing spending commitment, Ghana’s agricultural budget share has remained well below 10 percent during the last decade. Depending on accounting principles followed, estimates range from 1 to 2 percent (CAGD 2016), 2 to 4 percent (FAO 2014) or 6 to 8 percent (MoFA 2017a). Given strong evidence that agricultural spending in developing countries yields significant returns (Mogues et al. 2015), Ghana’s relatively weak agricultural performance during the period from 2007 to 2017 may be linked to low levels of spending. At 4.3 percent per annum, agricultural GDP growth has only been half that realized in the non-agricultural sectors (MoF 2018). This weak agricultural growth has also not benefited the poor. Rural poverty has increased in recent years, especially in northern Ghana (GSS 2018). While budgetary allocations to agriculture matter, the quality of spending is as important (Akroyd and Smith 2007). In this regard, concerns have been raised about the decline in allocations to agricultural research, knowledge transfer, and infrastructure in favor of spending on routine operations (FAO 2014; World Bank 2017). Ideally, sector budgets should maintain a healthy balance between investments in a sector’s capacity to grow, e.g., infrastructure or farmers’ knowledge, and expenditures that are fully consumed in the same period, e.g., operational expenses or subsidies (Benin & Tiburcio 2018; Mogues et al. 2015).
Following Ghana’s unfavorable assessment in the African Agricultural Transformation Scorecard (AATS), which was launched by the African Union (AU) in 2018, and in light of policy developments, budgetary trends, and socioeconomic outcomes, Ghana’s development partners called for an increase in funding allocated to the agriculture sector at the national Joint Sector Review for Agriculture in June 2019. They further called for improvements in the effectiveness of agricultural spending, with the distortionary effects of large-scale subsidy programs highlighted as a specific concern. A recent study led by IFPRI’s Ghana Strategy Support Program (GSSP) and FAO’s Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) project considers these issues further (Aragie et al. 2019). Specifically, using an economywide model of the Ghanaian economy, the research-ers examined how changes in the level and composition of public agricultural expenditure affect socioeconomic outcomes in the short and medium term in Ghana. This note highlights selected key study findings.

× Many rural development programs aim at improving women’s economic empowerment in agriculture, but as rural income continues to diversify, women may prefer investing in nonfarm activities. In a framed field experiment with 1,527 men and women in Ghana, we elicit preferences for investments in crop farming versus other business activities. We analyze whether gender differences in preferences for non-farm diversification, if any, can be ascribed to differential access to physical and human capital, and to what extent a gender gap is explained by differences in socio-economic characteristics, skills, perceptions and norms. Despite strong beliefs that men and women are more skilled in crop farming and non-farm businesses, respectively, many respondents invest in both farm and non-farm activities and we find only a small gender gap in revealed preferences for non-farm diversification. This gap can be largely explained by gender stereotyping around perceived skills. Increasing access to physical and human capital does not significantly affect preferences. We conclude that both men and women reveal a strong preference for diversified investments, which needs to be reflected in programs and policies aiming to improve women’s economic empowerment.

× 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.

× 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?

× 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.”

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× 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.

× Increased capital use in agriculture, including mechanization, is con-sidered an integral process of agricultural transformation. Despite some recent emergence of medium-to-large scale farmers in SSA, as well as labor-movement out of agricultural sector (particularly youths), smallholders without substantial mechanization have re-mained the majority in the agricultural sector in countries like Gha-na. Globally, mechanization has often been associated with large-scale farming given the complementarity between machine and land. The experiences in Asia in the last few decades, however, suggest that mechanization may grow even among smallholders before they transition into larger-scale farmers. These experiences have prompted the need to understand better how mechanization may be adopted by smallholders for whom the scope for exploiting complementarity between mechanization and land is limited. We test the hypotheses that high-yielding technologies, which potentially raise returns to more intensive farm power use, are im-portant drivers of adoptions of agricultural mechanization among smallholders at both extensive and intensive margins. We do so using the three rounds of repeated cross-sectional, nationally rep-resentative data (Ghana Living Standard Surveys (GLSS) 2006, 2013, 2017), as well as unique tractor-use data in Ghana collected by IFPRI and Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (IFPRI-SARI data), and multi-dimensional indicators of agroclimatic similarity with plant-breeding locations.

× The baseline survey data were collected in Ethiopia (November 2014 – December 2014), Tanzania (June 2015 – July 2015), and Ghana (November 2015 – February 2016) as part of the five-year Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Small-Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) project. The ILSSI project aims to benefit farmers of Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Ghana by improving effective use of scarce water supplies through interventions aimed at the scaling of small-scale irrigation for prosperity, nutrition and women’s empowerment. Due to differences in sampling methodology and survey timing, the Ghana survey data are not further described in the following. The ILSSI project is led by the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University, which also models the potential for upscaling of small-scale irrigation and environmental impacts and builds capacity using the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS). The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) led the baseline and endline data collection as well as analysis of the gender, nutritional and health impacts of small-scale irrigation technologies, and the potential for upscaling of small-scale irrigation technologies to the national level in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and North Carolina A&T State University field tested promising small-scale irrigation technologies in selected sites in each country and identified promising business models, small-scale irrigation technologies and opportunities to remove constraints to scaling. Local collaborators included in the data collection included the Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions (Ethiopia), Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania), and University of Development Studies (Ghana). The ILSSI baseline survey collected detailed household, individual, and plot-crop level data including the following modules: household roster; description of agricultural land (size, distance from home, soil type, registration, etc.); soil conservation; crop production, agricultural inputs, irrigation water sources, technologies and practices, and sales of agricultural products; labor (family, hired, and exchanged); livestock ownership, feed, and products; household income and expenditures; participation in social protection and development programs; shocks (agricultural and non-agricultural); dietary diversity and anthropometry; health; food security; and water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

× Despite the urbanization and gradual rise of medium-to-large scale farming sector, smallholders without substantial mechanization remain central to agriculture in countries like Ghana. Significant knowledge gaps exist on the adoptions of agricultural mechanization among smallholders for whom the scope for exploiting complementarity with land is limited. We test the hypotheses that high-yielding technologies, which potentially raise total factor productivity and also returns to more intensive farm power use, are important drivers of adoptions of agricultural mechanization among smallholders. Using the three rounds of repeated crosssectional, nationally representative data (Ghana Living Standard Surveys 2006, 2013, 2017), as well as unique tractor-use data in Ghana, and multi-dimensional indicators of agroclimatic similarity with plant- reeding locations, this paper shows that the adoption of rented agricultural equipment and tractors in Ghana has been induced by high-yielding production systems that have concentrated in areas that are agroclimatically similar to plant-breeding locations. These effects hold for mechanization adoptions at both extensive margins (whether to adopt or not) and intensive margins (how much to adopt). These linkages have strengthened between 2006 and 2010s, partly due to improved efficiency in supply-side factors of mechanization.

× Multisectoral coordination and action are recognized as necessary conditions to effec-tively address the multiple drivers of malnutrition. There has been a strong effort in the past decade to establish multisector coordination at the national level among member states of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. However, the practice of subnational and commu-nity-level nutrition coordination is still emerging, and literature on the factors related to the formation and success of such coordination bodies is limited (for example, Harris et al. 2017). Understanding contextual factors is particularly important for supporting local-level ena-bling environments, where traditional customs may hold influence over political and social structures. A multisector nutrition committee was formed in Poyentanga, a subdistrict of Wa West District in the impoverished Upper West region of Ghana, where acute child malnutrition is driven by seasonal food insecurity. The committee was launched in November 2018 as a plat-form to coordinate local stakeholders to address the challenges of persistent malnutrition in the communities of Poyentanga. This case study examines the enabling environment for local-level engagement and action on nutrition to understand the context and the key factors that led to the formation of the Poyentanga nutrition committee. The basic policy framework and institutional structures were already in place for multi-sector coordination on nutrition before the committee was established. The National Nutrition Policy specifies the formation of a multisectoral coordination mechanism for nutrition services and programmes at national and subnational levels, and responsibility for resource allocation for the delivery of necessary services sits with the District Assemblies. Yet a strong focus on the treatment of acute malnutrition in Wa West District had left the administration of curative nu-trition services largely to the health sector, with little attention given to preventative ap-proaches or engagement from other sectors. Once attention was drawn to the prevalence and consequences of malnutrition, stakeholders from across sectors demonstrated high commit-ment to addressing the problem.

× Food safety hazards threaten the health and market access of smallholder farming households. Smallholders face a number of barriers to improving food safety and quality, including low awareness, high input costs, and the failure of premium prices to pass through to producers. In this paper we examine how lifting these barriers affects Ghanaian groundnut farmers’ adoption of low-tech, low-cost post-harvest practices that reduce aflatoxin contamination. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in northern Ghana over the course of two seasons to test three interventions: (1) training on aflatoxin and its prevention, (2) distribution of free drying sheets, and (3) a price premium for groundnuts that comply with local aflatoxin regulations. In the first year we test for effects on post-harvest practices and aflatoxin levels, and in the second we test for effects on aflatoxin levels only. We find that training farmers substantially improves post-harvest practices. Drying sheet distribution and to a lesser extent the premium price lead to further improvements. We find substantial corresponding decreases in aflatoxin levels from drying sheet provision in the study region where background aflatoxin levels were highest. Beyond regional differences, benefits are higher for households with higher aflatoxin at baseline, more members, and young children. The estimated impacts of the price premium intervention are of similar magnitude, but not statistically significant.

× 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.

× We analyze the linkages between irrigation and nutrition using data from irrigators and non-irrigators in Northern Ghana. The results show that (i) there is a modest difference in the overall household dietary diversity score between irrigators and non-irrigators, (ii) there are significant differences in the consumption of animal source foods between irrigators and non-irrigators, (iii) there are significant differences in the consumption of fruits and vegetables as well as sugar and honey between irrigators and non-irrigators, and (iv) the sources of food consumption differ between irrigators and non-irrigators. The analysis shows strong association between households’ nutritional status and their access to irrigation, with evidences suggesting that the irrigation-nutrition linkages play out both through the income and production pathways in Northern Ghana.

× An analysis of learning outcomes from the evaluation of a national school feeding program in Ghana reveals that disadvantaged students benefited most from free school meals. Overall, students with access to school meals had higher academic and cognitive test scores on average compared with students without access to the program, but the program led to much greater gains for certain disadvantaged groups including girls, students from poor households, and students from the Northern regions of Ghana. This evidence suggests that providing free school meals is an effective way to increase opportunities for disadvantaged youth by leveling the playing field through improved educational achievement. However, key structural changes could maximize potential learning impacts resulting from the program. Improvements in program implementation through monitoring the quality and quantity of food served are needed to overcome program implementation challenges identified by the evaluation. Beyond the feeding program itself, investments to improve the quality of education are expected to further improve learning outcomes, especially when school meals incentivize increased school attendance.

× Aflatoxin is a poisonous substance produced by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus, that occurs naturally in soils of cultivated and non-cultivated areas. The fungus commonly produces the toxin in maize, groundnut, and other staple grains and vegetables, and is especially prevalent in Africa. When animals consume feed contaminated with aflatoxin, milk and (at very low levels) meat, fish and eggs, can also be contam-inated. This note brings together recent research from the CGIAR and others on technologies for aflatoxin control in Africa and provides recommendations for catalyzing their adoption.

× Understanding contextual risk factors for haemoglobin (Hb) status and anaemia of rural school‐aged children (SAC) and adolescents is critical in developing appropriate interventions to prevent anaemia. We analysed secondary data from the baseline of an impact evaluation of the Ghana School Feeding Programme to determine the severity of anaemia and contextual factors associated with anaemia and Hb status among rural SAC (6–9 years; n = 323) and adolescents (10–17 years; n = 319) in Ghana. We used regression models with variable selection based on backward elimination in our analyses. The mean Hb was 113.8 ± 13.1 g/L, and the overall prevalence of anaemia was 52.3%, being 55.1% and 49.5% among SAC and adolescents, respectively. We identified child's age (β = 2.21, P < 0.001); farm diversity score (β = 0.59, P = 0.036); and agro‐ecological zone (P trend <0.001) as the main predictors of Hb of SAC. Household asset index (P trend = 0.042) and agro‐ecological zone (P trend <0.001) were predictors of Hb in adolescents. Agro‐ecological zone and age were predictors of anaemia, but the effect of age was only significant for girls and not boys (prevalence odds ratio [POR] = 1.35, 95% CI [1.04, 1.76] vs. POR = 1.14, 95% CI [0.88, 1.46]). SAC in households with maize stock were less likely to be anaemic (POR = 0.55, 95% CI [0.32, 0.97]). Household dietary diversity score (β = 0.59, P = 0.033) was associated with Hb status for the full sample only. Anaemia is a severe public health problem among SAC and adolescents in rural Ghana irrespective of sex. Farm diversity score, availability of maize stock in the household, household asset index, and agro‐ecological zone were the main predictors of Hb and anaemia among the rural SAC and adolescents.

× Many rural development programs aim at improving women’s economic empowerment in agriculture, but as rural income continues to diversify, women may prefer investing in nonfarm activities. In a framed field experiment with 1,527 participants in Ghana, we elicit preferences among both men and women for investments in crop farming versus alternative income-generating activities. We analyze gender differences in preferences and whether these can be ascribed to differential access to physical and human capital, or to differences in socio-economic characteristics, skills, perceptions and norms. We find that many respondents prefer to invest in both farm and non-farm activities. Women prefer investing significantly more towards non-farm diversification than men, but the gender gap is much smaller than expected a priori. Differential access to physical and human capital does not appear to explain this gap. Rather, the gender gap is associated with gender stereotyping of
perceived skills. We conclude that both men and women reveal a strong preference for a diversity of income-generating activities, which needs to be reflected in programs and policies aiming to improve women’s economic empowerment.

× Attention to nutrition during all phases of child and adolescent development is necessary to ensure healthy physical growth and to protect investments made earlier in life. Leveraging school meals programs as platforms to scale-up nutrition interventions is relevant as programs function in nearly every country in the world.

× Recent growth in many African countries has been accompanied by rapid urbanization, which could have major impacts on rural livelihoods. This paper examines patterns of rural livelihoods and poverty in Ghana based on the proximity of rural areas to cities of different sizes. The paper finds that many rural households in the areas close to cities have shifted their primary employment from agriculture to nonagriculture, especially in the more urbanized South. This trend strengthens over time. This appears to take place in contrast to the traditional model of rural livelihood diversification, with some family members working in agriculture and some in nonagriculture. Although cities have created market demand for agriculture, proximity to cities does not seem to influence agricultural intensification in terms of modern input use, possibly due to agricultural markets being relatively integrated in Ghana. Proximity to cities has implications for rural households being less poor and becoming middle class even after controlling for being a nonfarm household in rural areas.

× Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children’s height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana.

× Ghana has been viewed as one of Africa's political and economic success stories, from maintaining a multi-party democracy, peace and social cohesion to reducing poverty and growing its middle class. Yet, despite 30 years of continuous growth in per capita income and rapid urbanization, the country has not been able to industrialize and most of the workforce is either trapped in traditional agriculture or low-productivity jobs in the services sector. Agriculture holds the potential to help bring about more sustainable and equitable patterns of growth, but public and private actors will need to adjust course in order to achieve it.

× Objectives: To define key stressors experienced and coping behaviours within poor agrarian communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

× Maize is an important staple crop in Ghana, but maize productivity is low. Other countries with similar agroecological conditions have increased maize productivity by increasing the use of maize hybrids. This paper presents the results of maize trials in northern Ghana, in which hybrids were tested to see if they performed significantly better than the varieties planted by farmers. This paper details the procedures of the maize trials and presents descriptive statistics of the trial results. The trials demonstrated that two foreign hybrids performed consistently better than Obaatanpa, the most widely used variety in the north. The foreign hybrids performed consistently well in all districts and appear to be well-suited for planting in northern Ghana.

× This study looks broadly at the state of vegetable competitiveness in Ghana; focusing on trade, production, profitability, and marketing. Ghana is dependent on imports to meet its vegetable consumption requirements. While Ghana has the potential to meet local vegetable demand because of its diverse agro-ecological zones, currently production is highly seasonal and yields are significantly lower than in neighboring countries. Large urban markets are restricted by networks of traders and, while farmers can get higher prices through these networks, many farmers lack market power and struggle to access the marketing networks. This may lower incentives for vegetable farmers to increase their production. However, despite these challenges, vegetable production is profitable and there is potential for significant expansion. Strategies to improve yields as well as measures to remove restrictions on entry to major markets should be considered.

× Since 2010, when the country reached lower-middle-income status, Ghana’s economic performance has been highly variable. Growth was rapid from 2011 to 2013—largely due to strong performance in the oil and gas sector—as the economy expanded by more than 10 percent annually, but slumped to 3.8 percent from 2014 to 2016. In 2017, growth picked up to 6.3 percent and is expected to be among the highest in Africa in 2018, at a projected 8.3 percent. The agriculture and natural resource sectors account for 41.5 percent of employment and nearly a third of gross domestic product (GDP). Labor is moving out of agriculture, but predominantly into low-productivity services sectors rather than into high-productivity manufacturing. Average agricultural growth hovered around 5 percent from 2014 to 2017. To increase productivity and boost economic growth, Ghana must continue to invest in agriculture and, to promote transformation, should facilitate the development of agro-industries to diversify agriculture. Ghana’s inconsistent growth performance warrants a fresh look at rigorous research to inform the country’s development strategy. The Ghana Strategy Support Program (GSSP), implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Ghana, was launched in 2005 and is currently in its third phase (2014–2018). overall objective of IFPRI/GSSP is to conduct research and advise on strategic policy options to support agricultural growth, rural development, and economic transformation in Ghana

× Global growth in aquaculture is underway – a “blue revolution” featuring rapid increases in demand for fish and a corresponding surge in aquaculture production. This paper describes the fast-growing tilapia value chain in Ghana to demonstrate the features of a nascent blue revolution in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and to illustrate its potential for job creation and reducing poverty and food insecurity there. Tilapia production has been growing at 15 percent annually in SSA, but imports are also surging to satisfy the growing appetite for tilapia. This paper illustrates how aquaculture can grow sustainably in SSA within the context of growing demand and global competition. A value chain analysis is conducted using secondary data analysis, desk reviews of experiences and lessons from other countries, interviews with 95 actors in the tilapia value chain in Ghana, and detailed production and profitability data from Ghanaian tilapia farmers. A profitable farmed tilapia industry has been established in Ghana with the potential to expand supply to satisfy local demand and to export to neighboring countries. Productivity in the industry has grown mainly through reducing the mortality rates of fingerlings and improvements in the supply of locally-produced high-quality fish feed. Feed costs remain high. However, there is potential to reduce those costs by improving the productivity of crops that are used in fish feed, particularly maize and soybean. Reducing local feed costs will have positive spillover effects on both other pond-based aquaculture systems and on the livestock feed sector. Moreover, Ghana can expand it fish feed production to be an important source of feed within SSA.
The industry can further increase aquaculture productivity through the adoption of faster-growing fish strains and better management practices. Ghana’s aquaculture sector could grow even faster by adopting lessons from other countries, including on infrastructure provision, fiscal incentives for the production of fish feed ingredients, and sustainable fish farming practices, particularly through paying close attention to water and feed quality and addressing food safety concerns within the sector.

× This paper uses an innovative research process to quantify the potential impacts of releasing and adopting insect-resistant (IR) cowpea and nitrogen-use efficient (NUE) rice in Ghana using an economic surplus partial equilibrium model. The premise of the research process was to build national capacity to produce timely and robust estimates, based on secondary data and qualified experts’ informed opinions, collected in country. Ghana’s stakeholders selected the two genetically modified (GM) technologies discussed here based on their assessment of these GM products’ regulatory advancement and their economic and political importance. Using assumptions regarding the expected changes from the adoption and commercialization of these crops, collected from national and international crop and technology experts, the authors estimate that the benefits of adopting IR cowpea are between US$5.5 million and US$125.3 million, and between US$1.9 million and US$153 million for NUE rice. The analysis also shows how a five-year regulatory delay may erode these benefits, reducing them by between 29 and 39 percent for IR cowpea and between 28 and 57 percent for NUE rice. Additionally, the authors make preliminary estimates of sex-disaggregated benefits and calculate the unequal distribution of benefits between female and male producers and consumers owing to gender disparities in production and consumption. The welfare estimations are based on an economic surplus model that were estimated using the DREAM software. Although this partial equilibrium model has limitations regarding market-clearing assumptions and is specific to a product, it is a data-parsimonious method that can produce results in a short time frame, which might better suit policymakers’ and decision makers’ demands for rapid estimations.

× Appendices for IFPRI Discussion Paper 1782: Food for thought? Experimental evidence on the learning impacts of the Ghana School Feeding Program

× Over the past decade, Ghana has achieved significant reductions in hunger and improvement in nutrition of women and children. Undernourishment rate (Food Balance Sheet indicator) has declined and remained below 5% over the past decade. 1 Young child growth has improved as indicated by reduced stunting (low height-for-age), from 28% in 2008 to 19% in 2014; underweight, from 14% in 2008 to 11% in 2014; and wasting- from 8.5% in 2008 to 5% in 2014.2 However, in the context of increasing urbanization and income growth, challenges of urban food and nutrition insecurity and overnutrition have begun to arise. Understanding the drivers of these positive changes will provide useful lessons for future actions for food and nutrition security. While consideration of emergent problems related to urbanization and overnutrition is also necessary. This requires broad consideration of the actions and occurrences that may have contributed in the past, and how Ghana’s changing food system can be leveraged for future progress. To achieve these objectives, two new research initiatives have commenced in Ghana. These
are ‘Stories of Change in Nutrition in Ghana’, and ‘Leveraging Food Systems for Improved Nutrition in Ghana’. Both have been initiated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). This report provides a summary of a consultative stakeholder meeting held jointly by the two initiatives on July 3, 2018 in Accra, to engage key stakeholders just as the two initiatives are commencing activities in Ghana. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce participants to the research plans and activities and to present preliminary findings. The meeting also was an opportunity to seek stakeholder input on: a) the actors, actions, and policy processes that have led to improvements in key nutrition problems in the past ; and b) the opportunities for leveraging a changing food system for continued progress on nutrition. Finally, the meeting also sought to learn from stakeholders what were feasible approaches and pathways for engagement and participation. Proceedings of the meeting are presented in this report.

× Drawing on qualitative data from Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania, this paper develops a framework for examining the intrahousehold distribution of benefits from technology adoption, focusing on small-scale irrigation technologies. The framework contributes to the conceptual and empirical exploration of joint control over technology by men and women in the same household. Efforts to promote technology adoption for agricultural development and women’s empowerment would benefit from an understanding of intrahousehold control over technology to avoid interpreting technology adoption as an end in and of itself.

× There are concerns that increasing women’s engagement in agriculture could negatively affect nutrition by limiting the time available for nutrition-improving reproductive work. However, very few empirical studies provide evidence to support these concerns. This paper examines the relationship between women’s time spent in domestic work and agriculture and women’s and children’s dietary diversity. Using data from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique, we find that women’s domestic work and cooking time are positively correlated with more diverse diets. We also find differential effects depending on asset poverty status. In Mozambique, working long hours in agriculture is negatively associated with women’s dietary diversity score in nonpoor women, but is positively associated with poor women’s dietary diversity and poor children’s minimum acceptable diet. This suggests that agriculture as a source of food and income is particularly important for the asset poor. Our results reveal that women’s time allocation and nutrition responses to agricultural interventions are likely to vary by socioeconomic status and local context.

× Using data from two culturally distinct locales, Bangladesh and Ghana, we investigate whether men and women who report sole decision making in a particular domain experience stronger (or weaker) feelings of autonomous motivation—measured using the Relative Autonomy Index (RAI)—compared to those who report joint decision making. Used primarily in psychology, the RAI measures the extent to which an individual’s actions are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, where higher scores indicate greater autonomy. On aggregate, we find differences between men and women, and across countries, in the significance of association between the individual’s level of participation in decision-making and autonomy. In addition, we find heterogeneity in the strength of this association, depending on the domain (e.g., productive versus personal decisions) and whether partners agree on who normally makes decisions. These findings imply that details related to context and measurement matter for understanding individual decision-making power. We argue that all research using information on decision-making should include a careful analysis of men’s and women’s perceptions of decision making within the household, which may be useful for calibrating indicators to suit spicific contexts

× Africa south of the Sahara experienced an acceleration of economic growth in recent years that was accompanied by structural changes in national economies. Some African countries, such as Ghana, managed to utilize rapid growth for poverty reduction and improving food and nutrition security. Transformation of agriculture appears to have played an important role in this context. However, the linkages between agricultural transformation and food and nutrition security at the household level are not well understood. This article examines the linkage between farm production diversity and household dietary diversity in rural Ghana and how that linkage changed between 2005–06 and 2012–13. The empirical analysis employs a regression model that controls for region- and time-fixed effects. The estimation results suggest that farm production diversification, as well as household income growth, continues to be strongly associated with increased household dietary diversity. The analysis further explores the mechanism that underlies this production-consumption linkage by systematically modifying the basic model specification.

× If you asked most Ghanaians where the opportunities of the future lie, they would point to Accra, Kumasi, and other big cities. The country’s thousands of small farms symbolize the past—and they symbolize poverty. But this dichotomy misses an important point. Agriculture is not going away; it is transforming. Subsistence farming may be gradually disappearing (the number of Ghanaians who say farming is their primary job fell from 57 to 44 percent between 2006 and 2016), but it is being replaced by a more dynamic, productive, market-oriented agriculture.

× This paper summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa under the Transfer Project. Specifically, it investigates if transfers: 1) induce higher spending on alcohol or tobacco; 2) are fully consumed (rather than invested); 3) create dependency (reduce participation in productive activities); 4) increase fertility; 5) lead to negative community-level economic impacts (including price distortion and inflation); and 6) are fiscally unsustainable. The paper presents evidence refuting each claim, leading to the conclusion that these perceptions—insofar as they are utilized in policy debates—undercut potential improvements in well-being and livelihood strengthening among the poor, which these programs can bring about in sub-Saharan Africa, and globally. It concludes by underscoring outstanding research gaps and policy implications for the continued expansion of unconditional cash transfers in the region and beyond.

× We explore the determinants of firm exit and growth in the food processing sector using nationally representative data for 745 firms in Ghana. In our sample, 168 of the firms exited the sector during the period 2014-2017. Firms were more likely to exit if they were in a rural district, were younger, and were involved in grain milling, but there was little impact of firm size on the likelihood of exit. In terms of firm growth, we find that tax registration, combined with registration with the national food regulator, had positive impacts on firm growth, while tax registration alone has a weaker effect. Therefore, for the food processing sector, efforts to promote formalization of firms for tax purposes would yield greater benefits if firms are also encouraged to undergo regulatory inspections and certification.

× Using public expenditure and agricultural production data on Ghana from 1961 to 2012, this
paper assesses the returns to public spending in the agricultural sector, taking into
consideration expenditures on agriculture as a whole and then separately for expenditures in
the cocoa versus the noncocoa subsectors. Different regression methods and related
diagnostic tests are used to address potential endogeneity of agricultural expenditure, crosssubsector
dependence of the production function error terms, and within-subsector serial
correlation of the error terms. The estimated elasticities are then used to calculate the rate of
return to expenditures in the sector as a whole and within the two subsectors.
The elasticity of land productivity with respect to total agricultural expenditure is
estimated at 0.33–0.34. For the noncocoa subsector, the estimated elasticity is 0.66–0.81. And
in the cocoa subsector, it is 0.36–0.43. The returns to total agricultural expenditure are
estimated at 82–84 percent for the aggregate analysis. For the disaggregated sectorial
analysis, the returns to expenditure in the noncocoa subsector are estimated at 437–524
percent, whereas the returns to expenditure in the cocoa subsector are estimated at 11–14
percent. Implications are discussed for raising overall productivity of expenditure in the
sector, as well as for further studies.