Experience has shown that governments choices on spending of public resources makes a great deal of difference in agricultural sector development. Agricultural public spending in Africa not only lags behind other developing regions by several metrics of volume, its impact is also vitiated by misinvestment such as subsidies and transfers that tend to benefit the better off, with insignificant gains for the poor. Shortcomings of the budgeting process also reduce spending effectiveness. African governments and regional institutions such as NEPAD and the CAADP have clearly recognized the...

By most accounts, rural Malawi has lacked dynamism in the past decade. Growth has been mostly volatile, in large part due to unstable macroeconomic fundamentals evidenced by high inflation, fiscal deficits, and interest rates. When rapid economic growth has materialized, the gains have not always reached the poorest. Poverty remains high and the rural poor face significant challenges in consistently securing enough food. Several factors contribute to stubbornly high rural poverty. They include a low-productivity and non-diversified agriculture, macroeconomic and recurrent climatic shocks,...