In African agrarian communities where livestock are part of people’s livelihoods, farmers have forged symbiotic relationships with their cattle, goats, sheep, camels, pigs and poultry, among others. While the world is elevating the role of…
While a supermarket chain can have a customer care department responsible for answering queries and harvesting feedback from diverse customers, informal agricultural markets in major African cities have different ways of gathering customer experience. They…
While ICTs have been part of African agriculture and rural communities for many years, benefits associated with these technologies have eluded the majority of farmers, traders and value chain actors. There is now a strong…
Capitalism may be accused of misleading many African countries into limiting the valuation of their resources to tangible assets such as buildings, minerals, land and wildlife. However, failure to account for intangible assets like local…
In African countries where agriculture is a major socio-economic activity, policy makers and development agencies seem determined to move economic activities from agriculture to manufacturing. The whole discourse around value addition suggests a strong desire…
When economists and policy makers in developing countries talk about evidence, in most cases they mean numbers or statistics. For instance in African countries, statistics dominate the language used to describe fiscal policies and budgets…
Millions of dollars have gone into promoting gender equality in many developing countries. More millions continue to be poured into gender programmes. However, it has remained easy to conduct workshops and write documents on gender…
Risk has been part of life since time immemorial. Even before the dawn of modern banking, risk could not be separated from human survival opportunities such as hunting and gathering food. African forests teemed with…
Climate change and unstable agricultural markets in developing countries are forcing agricultural actors to rely on constant experimentation. Historical knowledge is no longer enough for decision-making as contexts are always shifting. The level of complexity…
Over the past few years, financial authorities and development organizations in Africa have become fond of ‘financial inclusion’ as a process of involving many people in banking services. Unfortunately, such a notion reduces everything to…