Publication database

Commendable progress has been made across many parts of Africa over the past years to increase agricultural productivity, reduce hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, create new employment opportunities for young people and improve the livelihoods of rural communities. Yet, demographic change, urbanization, shifting diets and climatic changes mean that pressure is growing on food systems to make more food and more varied and nutritious food available and accessible.  How African countries position themselves to harness and deploy digital technologies will determine the future competitiveness of African agriculture and its contribution to African economies.

The current report — Byte by byte: policy innovation for transforming Africa’s food system with digital technologies— summarizes the key findings of a systematic analysis of what seven African countries at the forefront of progress on digitalization of the agriculture sector have done right. It analyzes which institutional and policy innovations were implemented and which actions by the private sector and agtech start-ups were taken to increase the development and use of digital tools and services in the agriculture value chain. The objective of this report is to identify interventions that work and benefit farmers and other actors in the value chain and recommend options for policy and program innovation that allow countries to develop a digitalization ecosystem in which digital technologies and services can be developed and used to foster growth and competitiveness in Africa’s agriculture value chains. 

Commissioned by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, this report presents an analysis of four smallholder support programmes in South Africa.

This case study looks at the potential value of horticulture for farmers in Tanzania, and the contribution of the seed sector to the growing Tanzanian horticulture sector. It is intended for all those working in horticulture, in Tanzania and elsewhere, to stimulate thought and discussion on how to foster a vibrant sector with widespread benefits.

A successful service delivery model creates value both for farmers and the service provider. This joint report analyzes 10 borrowers in Root Capital’s loan portfolio, exploring the impact and economic sustainability of their farmer extension services. It also identifies opportunities for improving and scaling these services to support farmers.

The aim of this report is to identify how commercial businesses can generate employment opportunities in rural areas through inclusive business models.

Commissioned by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, this report presents a practically oriented Theory of Change to develop business models for successful and sustainable smallholder integration into commercial value chains.

This report presents findings and best practices from idh's innovating partners with regards to empowering farmers through service delivery, while generating sustainable returns to their businesses. Learn more about their models’ drivers of farmer resilience, cost reduction and financial sustainability.  And get inspired, by service models helping millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty, in often remote areas and developing economies around the globe.

Contract farming (CF) agreements are presently being restructured to form part of more complex Inclusive Business (IB) set-ups. Additional instruments, alongside CF, are implemented to overcome the challenges of CF and to adapt to the policy environment in which the different stakeholders operate. This paper develops a theoretical framework that gives insight into how these complex entities are structured and operate in a developing country context. It finds that a high dependence by the offtaker in the first case study stimulates a higher level of commitment and investment by this stakeholder in the contract arrangement. In turn, this increases the asset specificity aspect, which then requires safeguards to ensure the smallholders adhere to the contractual agreement. A higher dependency in this particular study also resulted in a higher number of smallholders being engaged in the contract, requiring mechanisms to efficiently monitor and coordinate them.

Inclusive business is hailed as a win-win scenario for the development of smallholder farmers and poor communities; yet there is little insight into how these inclusive businesses work and, more importantly, for whom. This book aims for a thorough understanding of the range of inclusive businesses in agriculture by examining: the structures they implement, the actors involved, and whether they are effectively inclusive of smallholders. By offering a critical assessment of inclusive businesses overall, it allows for a better perception of what works where, and under which conditions. It provides useful insights that will benefit smallholders, agri-businesses, support groups, policy makers and investors who are willing to promote more inclusive businesses, that foster a better integration of smallholders into commercial value-chains and a more equitable and sustainable agricultural sector.

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This issue focuses on understanding and influencing enabling policies for Inclusive agribusiness (IAB). Despite the large number of IAB initiatives, little has been done in terms of meta-analysis regarding enabling and constraining policy factors and cross country comparison. A key issue is not just the policy settings, but also the processes and platforms by which business, policy and other actors engage to transparently work on improved enabling conditions. A knowledge and learning agenda would consequently need to look at both substantive policy issues and processes.