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Policy briefPolicy briefUnlocking public expenditure to transform agrifood systems in sub-Saharan Africa 2022
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No results found.This policy brief highlights the main challenges of public spending on food and agriculture in selected sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. Public spending – or expenditure – on food and agriculture is widely accepted as the most cost-effective strategy to drive structural transformation and poverty reduction in developing countries. So much so that back in 2003, countries in the African Union stressed agriculture as an engine for socioeconomic growth, and committed to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to the sector. Almost 20 years later, most countries out of the sixteen analysed in the FAO study on ‘Public expenditure on food and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: trends, challenges and priorities’ still struggle to hit this development target. What, therefore, is stopping countries from spending more on the sector? Rather than a lack of political will, various factors such as constrained public budgets, limited fiscal space, and the burden of debt repayments are obstacles to higher public spending on agrifood systems. Moreover, the policy brief underscores two critical expenditure issues: budget execution and implementation. On average, over 20 percent of funds goes unspent, and this is more likely to occur in capital investment expenditures such as irrigation and road infrastructure. Raising additional resources for the sector where possible, unblocking already available resources and managing them effectively, as well as de-risking private-sector investments in the sector, and prioritizing spending with the highest returns, are the keys to unlocking public expenditure to help transform agrifood systems. -
Book (series)Working paperThe opportunity cost of not repurposing public expenditure in food and agriculture in sub-Saharan African countries
Background paper for The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024
2024Also available in:
No results found.Repurposing public support to food and agriculture has gained significant global attention. However, resources allocated to support the food and agriculture sector may not be high enough for significant repurposing in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper shows that most governments in 18 sub-Saharan African countries have allocated small shares of their budget to agriculture since 2004. Their narrow fiscal space and budget implementation capacity constrain any sizable increase in the budget allocated to agriculture. In this paper, an innovative policy optimization modelling tool helps us assess what would happen if the limited budget allocated to the crops and livestock sectors in six of the sub-Saharan African countries were reallocated optimally across different policy support measures and subsectors/commodities, under the same budget constraint. It shows public expenditure is being allocated inefficiently in all six countries and the needed reallocations to solve such allocative inefficiencies, which would result in higher agrifood output growth, thousands of off-farm jobs being created in rural areas, and millions of people getting out of poverty or being now able to afford a healthy diet. -
NewsletterNewsletterFall Armyworm Control in Action Newsletter, June 2021 - Issue #4 2021
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No results found.Fall Armyworm (FAW, Spodoptera frugiperda) is a pest originating in the Americas: it can fly over 100 km per day; it feeds on over 80 hosts; and a female moth can deposit 1 000 eggs during its life. Challenges in mitigating FAW damage include, among others, lack of the following: coordination at global, regional and national levels; effective monitoring and control techniques; and effective phytosanitary measures and capacity at national level. The Global Action for Fall Armyworm Control (GA, 2020-2022) was launched by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu on 4 December 2019 with a mandate for a strong and coordinated approach to strengthen prevention and sustainable pest control capacities. The GA focuses on Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Near East, where an integrated pest management (IPM) strategy will be implemented in countries with significant pest presence, and a prevention strategy will be conducted in areas with limited or no distribution of the pest. The GA has continued to support countries in managing FAW throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by conducting webinars and virtual trainings on FAW monitoring and management and by implementing activities where possible.
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