Adoption of ICT4D and its determinants: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Various Digital Agricultural Technologies (DAT) have been developed and implemented around the world. This study aims to estimate the overall adoption rate and identify the determinant factors for a better adoption perspective after decades of innovation and dissemination. A systematic review was conducted on published studies that reported adoption rates and determinant factors using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol.

Helping feed the world with rice innovations: CGIAR research adoption and socioeconomic impact on farmers.

Rice production has increased significantly with the efforts of international research centers and national governments in the past five decades. Nonetheless, productivity improvement still needs to accelerate in the coming years to feed the growing population that depends on rice for calories and nutrients. This challenge is compounded by the increasing scarcity of natural resources such as water and farmland.

Assessing rice production sustainability performance indicators and their gaps in twelve sub-Saharan African countries.

The benchmarking and monitoring of rice production performance indicators are essential for improving rice production self-sufficiency, increasing profitability, reducing labor requirements, optimizing fertilizer inputs, engaging youths in rice production, and increasing the overall sustainability of smallholder rice production systems in countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In this paper, we quantified five sustainability performance indicators (grain yield, net profit, labor productivity, and nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) use efficiencies) to benchmark rice production systems in SSA. Data were collected between 2013-2014 from 2907 farmers from two rice production systems (irrigated and rainfed lowlands) across five agroecological zones (arid, semiarid, humid, subhumid and highlands) in 12 countries (Benin, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Togo).

Agronomic gain: Definition, approach, and application.

Meeting future global staple crop demand requires continual productivity improvement. Many performance indicators have been proposed to track and measure the increase in productivity while minimizing environmental degradation. However, their use has lagged behind theory, and has not been uniform across crops in different geographies.

Contract farming and rural transformation: Evidence from a field experiment in Benin.

Contract farming has emerged as a popular mechanism to encourage vertical coordination in developing country agriculture. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on its ability to spur structural transformation in rural economies. We present results from a field experiment on contract farming for rice production in Benin.

Moving toward rice self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030: Lessons learned from 10 years of the Coalition for African Rice Development.

The Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) was initiated as a policy framework with the aim of doubling rice production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2008 to 2018. This paper assesses the contribution of the CARD policy to rice production and forecasts the local rice supply and demand to provide a better understanding of the policies needed to attain rice self-sufficiency by 2030. A combination of the autoregressive integrated moving average method and counterfactual approach was adopted using rice statistical data from 23 countries in SSA.

Policy options for mitigating impacts of COVID-19 on domestic rice value chains and food security in West Africa.

Rice plays a strategic role in food security in West Africa. However, the region increasingly relies on rice imports due to a growing and structural deficit, and domestic value chains face constraints in technology, finance and coordination. As a result, West Africa is very vulnerable to international and local trade disruptions, such as the ones currently inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa.

Following the food price crisis in 2008, African governments implemented policies aiming at crowding in investment in rice value chain upgrading to help domestic rice compete with imports. We assess the state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa by reviewing evidence on rice millers' investment in semi-industrial and industrial milling technologies, contract farming and vertical integration during the post-crisis period 2009-2019. We find that upgrading is more dynamic in countries with high rice production and import bills and limited comparative advantage in demand.

Dataset of the survey on e-registration and geo-referenced of rice value chain actors for the diffusion of technologies: Case of Benin and Côte d'Ivoire.

The paper presents a dataset of the e-registration of rice value chain actors in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire for assessing the adoption of innovations and the diffusion of new rice technologies. Data were collected from actors after a census conducted in three steps. In the first step, main rice production regions and rice value chain actors were identified.

Addressing diarrhea prevalence in the West African Middle Belt: social and geographic dimensions in a case study for Benin.

Background: In West Africa, the Northern Sahelian zone and the coastal areas are densely populated but the Middle Belt in between is in general sparsely settled. Predictions of climate change foresee more frequent drought in the north and more frequent flooding in the coastal areas, while conditions in the Middle Belt will remain moderate. Consequently, the Middle Belt might become a major area for immigration but there may be constraining factors as well, particularly with respect to water availability.