The vast majority of Nepal’s population—80 percent of whom live in rural areas—derives their livelihood from agriculture. Despite a decrease in recent years, agriculture’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) still amounts to one-third. The national government stresses the importance of agriculture to the national economy and food security; however, several decades of uneven institutional development has resulted in an ineicient agricultural research system that sufers from instability and uncertainty (NARC 2010).

The paper revisits seasonality by assessing how the quantity and quality of diets vary across agricultural seasons in rural and urban Ethiopia. Using unique nationally representative household level data for each month over one calendar year, we document seasonal fluctuations in household diets in terms of both the quantity of calories consumed and the number of different food groups consumed.

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is the breadbasket of China. Rural areas constitute a major center of grain and cotton production, and, as a result, rural wealth is highly dependent on access to irrigation water. A changing climate and increasing competition from the urban and industrial sectors as well as the implementation of province-level water withdrawal quotas equivalent to 37 km3 since 1999 described below threaten the agricultural sector�s sustained access to water resources.

Yemen has been facing severe development challenges in recent years, but rapidly depleting oil and water resources combined with large population increases and a lack of job-creating growth are making a difficult situation even more complicated.

In recent years access to safe and reliable water supplies has received increased government attention in Ethiopia. As a result, the national coverage rate for this service has gradually improved. Yet millions of people in rural areas still do not get drinking water from an improved water source. While expanding improved water source schemes is generally essential, it is equally important to ensure that the schemes have increased users' satisfaction with water quality and availability for everyday use.

Strong economic growth in urban areas has not led to rapid urbanization in Ethiopia, possibly as a result of prevailing land tenure policies. We examine the economic implications of accelerated urbanization using a rural–urban economywide model that explicitly captures internal migration and agglomeration effects. Simulation results indicate that accelerated urbanization would strengthen economic growth, improve rural welfare, and reduce the rural–urban divide.

Traditional authorities are powerful leaders alongside the state in Ghana. The chieftaincy has been resilient to “modernization”—maintaining land rights, allegiance from citizens, and influence in rural communities. Nonetheless, there are few rules defining their official role in the local government structure. It is empirically acknowledged that chiefs seriously impact the development of their communities. Hence, this study looks for factors that might explain the state’s deficiency in policy regarding chiefs.

"Malawi has experienced modest economic growth over the last decade and a half. However, agricultural growth has been particularly erratic, and while the incidence of poverty has declined, it still remains high. The Malawian government, within the framework of the Agricultural Development Plan (ADP), is in the process of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which provides an integrated framework of development priorities aimed at restoring agricultural growth, rural development and food security.

Research report

Onset risk, the uncertainty in the onset of rainy season, is an important element of weather risk for African farmers with little access to formal insurance who engage in traditional rainfed farming. A knowledge gap still exists empirically on how onset risk may affect the investment decisions of these farmers. In particular, farm productivity in Africa still depends on substantial labor inputs at the onset of the rainy season, sometimes involving seasonal migration to rural areas.

While agricultural production statistics are reported on a geopolitical – often national - basis we often need to know the status of production or productivity within specific sub-regions, watersheds, or agro-ecological zones. Such re-aggregations are typically made using expert judgments or simple area-weighting rules. We describe a new, entropy-based approach to making spatially disaggregated assessments of the distribution of crop production.

This paper presents the results of interviews with 44 stakeholders in the Nigerian fertilizer sector eliciting their perspective on various aspects of the federal and state government fertilizer subsidy programs. The stakeholders interviewed include persons employed at state-level ministries of agriculture and the agricultural development programs (ADPs), agricultural input dealers, members of small farmers associations, and farmers not aligned with a farmers association.