Large-scale land acquisitions by investors, which are often called ‘land grabs’ (see next section for de nition), can deprive rural women and communities of their livelihoods and land, increasing their food insecurity. This report argues that the current rise in land grabbing needs to be…

The report requested by the government
of Malawi updates the poverty assessment completed in March
1990. It will guide policy and investment priorities, and
inform the design of programs intended to improve living
conditions…

Malawi, a landlocked country in
southern, central Africa, depends on its natural resources,
especially the agriculture sector, to meet the demands of a
population of about 11 million people. The country has
developed a…

In this paper, the authors seek to answer three questions about poverty and forests in Malawi: (1) What is the extent of biomass available for meeting the energy needs of the poor in Malawi and how is this distributed? (2) To what extent does fuelwood scarcity affect the welfare of the poor? (3…

The adoption of new agricultural
technologies may be discouraged because of their inherent
riskiness. This study implemented a randomized field
experiment to ask whether the provision of insurance against
a major source of…

The Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) is a diagnostic tool to assess the status of land governance at country level using a participatory process that draws systematically on existing evidence and local expertise rather than on outsiders. The analysis covers nine themes: land tenure…

We estimated a normalized translog yield-response model using African farm-household survey data to compare the yield of smallholder maize production under integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) and chemical-based soil fertility management. Controlling for other factors, maize yield…