Agricultural Policy Research in Africa

Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) is a five-year (2016-2021) Research Programme Consortium funded by UK aid from the UK Government through DFID. The programme is based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK (www.ids.ac.uk), with regional hubs in Eastern Africa (Nairobi), West Africa (Ghana), and Southern Africa (South Africa. It has six (6) focal countries across East, West and Southern Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) representing a diverse range of commercialisation contexts and activities.

CABE hosts the Eastern Africa Hub of APRA and plays a coordination and governance role with specified roles on engaging and influencing policy and practice on agricultural commercialisation and its outcomes. These include: organising regional/ international conferences, workshops to share research results, and feedback on mid-term and end to Reference Groups and wider regional and national stakeholders and policy audiences.

APRA aims to produce new information and insights into different pathways to agricultural commercialisation in order to assess their impacts and outcomes on rural poverty, women’s and girl’s empowerment and food and nutrition security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The programme has four interlinked objectives: (1) generating high-quality evidence on pathways to agricultural commercialisation in Africa, using a rigorous mix of quantitative and qualitative methods; (2) undertaking policy research on agricultural commercialisation to fill key evidence gaps and define policy options; (3) ensuring the sharing and uptake of research by a diverse range of stakeholders; (4) strengthening the capacity of the research team, and associated partner institutions, to deliver high-quality research and advice.

The programme has just completed a one-year inception and moving into the first year of implementation. It is expected to facilitate policies on and investments in commercial agriculture to be more effective in terms of their impact on rural poverty, food and nutrition security, particularly in relation to women and girls; and provide a much better understanding of the political economy behind decision making on agricultural commercialisation in Africa. Read more on APRA: (http://www.future-agricultures.org/apra).