With headquarters at the Institute of Development Studies, the consortium includes regional hubs at the Centre for African Bio-Entrepreneurship (CABE), Kenya, the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), South Africa, and the University of Ghana, Legon. We also have partners at Lund University, Sweden, Michigan State University and Tufts University, USA.
Our Objectives
The aim of APRA is to produce new information and insights into different pathways to agricultural commercialisation. The consortium will examine interactions between various types of commercialisation and the effects this has on different groups of people over time, such as men and women. The programme will assess their impacts and outcomes on rural poverty, empowerment of women and girls and food and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa.
APRA has four interlinked research objectives listed in the sidebar —>
To achieve its objectives, we will work in sites that examine diverse pathways of commercialisation (influenced by the relationship to markets and scales of operation) and linked to different types of commercialisation (e.g. estates, medium-scale commercial farming, contract farming and smallholder commercialisation).
Our Work Streams
The APRA Consortium is focusing on five key outcomes of commercialisation including empowerment of women and girls; income and consumption poverty; inequality; employment rates and conditions; and food and nutrition security – across three work streams.
Work Stream 1 is examining the outcomes of different types of commercialisation and analysing people’s selection choices and their consequences,
Work Stream 2 is exploring longitudinal change over time and identifying different pathways of agricultural commercialisation and their outcomes.
Work Stream 3 is analysing key policy issues associated with changing patterns of agricultural commercialisation through six focused, multi-country, policy studies.
These include business investment in agricultural commercialisation; growth corridors and commercialisation: sites of expanding opportunities; (medium-scale farmers; BRICS interventions in agricultural commercialisation; commercialisation of livestock systems: winners and losers; and young people and agricultural commercialisation.