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This paper is part of a continuing research effort at ICRISA T to explore innovative strategies to accelerate adoption of improved technologies in the semi-arid tropics. Earlier studies in West and Central Africa have indicated that seed supply systems there function poorly and are therefore a major constraint to adoption of improved varieties. However, uptake of improved varieties and profitability of seed systems significantly differ from country to country and from crop to crop. This analysis attempts to assess the factors explaining these differences in seed sector performance, especially of groundnut and pearl millet in Niger and Senegal. It also draws useful lessons that could serve do...
Higher world food prices have led many developing countries to adopt policies to mitigate the impact on low-income households. This article sets out a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the efficiency, distributional, and revenue implications of alternative policy responses. The model is applied to evaluate tariff reductions and targeted transfers in Madagascar. Although lowering tariffs generates substantial efficiency gains, these accrue mainly to the top half of the welfare distribution, and poor net sellers are actually worse off. Developing a system of targeted direct transfers to poor households is likely to be a substantially more cost-effective approach to poverty alleviation.
"Bringing together a wide diversity of authors based on three continents and from different disciplinary backgrounds, this book offers analyses of a wide range of factors that characterize and that are shaping the future of the African Sahel. In forty chapters, organized in nine sections, the book examines this complex and rapidly changing region on multiple dimensions. Collectively, the book attempts to offer an understanding of the specificity of the Sahel, and to examine its core characteristics as shaped by the geographic, cultural, and political parameters that define it. Following a series of chapters focused on the shaping of the Sahelian space as a region, six chapters explore the di...