Resource information
The need for countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa to build more productive, modern, and market-oriented
farming sectors is one of our most pressing development
challenges. In coming years, African agriculture will have
to increase food production and expand and intensify value
chains in order to meet changing demand on the part of a
rapidly expanding and urbanizing consumer base. The process
of doing this will enable African countries to begin pushing
back against their currently growing reliance on food
imports. An essential precondition for bringing this
transformation to pass is to increase and improve the
information on which farmers and agribusinesses base their
production and investment decisions, and on which public
sector institutions base their policies. The purpose of the
Agribusiness Indicators (ABIs) Project is to provide this
kind of empirical information in the form of a series of
metrics and indicators that can be used to measure change
over time and to make direct comparisons between countries,
especially policy makers. These indicators will be used to
inform policy dialogue, including dialogue between
representatives of the private and public sectors. It will
provide a common framework of reference with which to
communicate their respective concerns, priorities, and
intentions. This will facilitate better communication that
leads to constructive interaction between public officials,
farmers producer organizations, private investors, civil
society organizations (CSOs), and others. Ultimately, it
will be their decisions that determine the course of
agricultural development and commercialization in their
respective countries. The Agribusiness Indicators are
intended to furnish them with information from sources
within both the private and public sectors which can be
cross-referenced and correlated. This type of information
has generally not been available in the past. Some of the
indicators are particularly useful in revealing the
attributes of countries with policy portfolios that are
supportive of agribusiness investment.
