A full conference programme is now available for our Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference, which takes place on 18-20 March in Pretoria, South Africa.

The speakers include Adebayo Olukoshi (UN African Institute for Economic Development and Planning), Lindiwe Sibanda (FANRPAN), Erica Maganga (Malawi government), Hon. Chance Kabaghe (Former Minister of Agriculture, Zambia), John Barrett (DFID), Fatima Shabodien (ActionAid International) and many more.

You can follow or join in the debate on Twitter using the hashtag #agpolitics.

• Conference homepage
• Full programme
• Download or view conference papers

We're delighted to announce the winners of our Africa-wide journalism competition on the politics and processes that influence agricultural investment in Africa.

The winners are:

• Print category: Oluyinka Alawode (Nigeria)
  
• Audio category: George Kalungwe (Malawi)

We had over 40 submissions to the competition. The panel was all agreed in the winning entries according to the following criteria:

1. Creative angle; 2 Conciseness; 3. Style; 4. Diverse voices/quotes used.

The full list of winners and runners-up is below, followed by links to download the print entries and listen to the audio. The winners are invited to take part in FAC’s conference on the political economy of agricultural policy in Africa in March 2013.

A post on the STEPS Centre blog by Future Agricultures researchers Jim Sumberg and John Thompson looks at the politics of chicken in Ghana, with elections just around the corner. 70,900 metric tons of frozen chicken were imported into the country in 2011, reflecting the changing tastes of urban consumers.

• Blog: Ghana: take 70,900 metric tons of frozen chicken, add politics by Jim Sumberg and John Thompson

The process of democratisation does not always create better pro-poor agricultural policy in Africa.

The Africa Portal has published an interview with FAC researcher Colin Poulton on whether democratisation in Africa leads to more pro-poor agricultural policy.

The interview comes ahead of our conference on the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa, in March 2013.

In the interview, Colin explains what recent FAC research shows about what actually motivates pro-poor policies in different countries, the role of chiefs in maintaining government control over land, the importance of political analysis and the role of civil society.

• Interview: the Limitations of Democracy in Pro-Poor Policy Making (Africa Portal)
• Conference: Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa, South Africa, March 2013
• Democratisation and the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa (pdf) FAC Working Paper 43

In a seminar at the Institute of Development Studies on 1 October, Dr Luka Biong Deng discussed South Sudan's uneasy relationship with oil and some ways to understand the country's future (audio and slides are below).

The excitement of recent independence has given way, in part, to fears about South Sudan's ability to survive economically. Although the country has large reserves of oil, this has not translated into wealth for many in the country.

The cotton industry in Burkina Faso is widely regarded as a success story. But little research has been done on the political economy of the industry.

A working paper by Augustin Loada (in French) examines the key players, reform processes, and the internal and external influences on Burkina’s cotton industry. It also looks at some key problems (corruption, lack of transparency and contractual difficulties), and the role of social movements. In the light of this analysis, the paper concludes with some implications for policy makers in the country.

This working paper examines how agricultural policy for the poor in eight African countries has been affected by the process of democratisation.

For a number of reasons, the agriculture sector has been neglected by national governments and development agencies in recent years. In theory, the rise of democracy should encourage agricultural policy that favours poor people. But is this the case?

This paper is part of a series of publications on the political economy of agricultural policy in Africa. Its publication comes ahead of our conference in March 2013, on the same subject.

Debates on the appropriate role for the state in stimulating agricultural development should be linked to an assessment of the capacity and willingness of the state to implement particular policies in particular country contexts.

The Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa (PEAPA) project proceeds from the following insights:

• it is a country’s political system which generates the incentives (strong or weak) for the state to take action to promote agricultural development;
• this political system also influences the type of development promoted (for example, smallholder or large farm based).

22 - 24 June 2011, Leeds, UK, by Colin Poulton

Africa College is a research partnership between University of Leeds (Faculties of Biological Sciences, Environment, Medicine and Health), IITA and ICIPE that aims “to improve the lives of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa by a sustainable enhancement of their food and nutritional security”. David Howlett (ex-DFID, now University of Leeds) seems to be a key link person in bringing the partners together.

Africa College research focuses on:

FAC’s conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, on 21-22 June 2010, focused on the findings of the World Bank’s Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant report. This influential document argues that a huge area, defined broadly as the ‘Guinea Savannah’, stretching across West Africa with a second belt down to southern Africa, offers huge potential for a new era of commercial agriculture in Africa. Intensive commercial production in this zone, it is asserted, would be sufficient to supply growing domestic, regional and global markets. The report offers two models for agricultural development of this area – the Brazilian Cerrado region, focusing on large-scale commercial operations, and northeast Thailand, where a smallholder-led revolution took place.