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This paper sets out to analyses and present trends in investments in agriculture in the SADC region. In pursuing this goal the paper empirically highlights the importance of disaggregating expenditure data when examining its links to measures of productivity and poverty. This is important because not all types of expenditure have the potential to positively impact on productivity and poverty. In order to pursue the goals set out in this paper, analysis focused mainly on data on agricultural public expenditure for Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Trend analysis leads to the following main findings: Various countries have tended to invest in their agricultural sectors differently across time, but investments have been limited and volatile, while the quality of spending has also gone down. There is also public agricultural expenditure bias towards crops at the expense of other sectors. The major implication is that there is need for more concerted efforts in the SADC to ensure more and better-targeted agricultural growth enhancing investments

Agriculture plays a crucial role in food security and poverty reduction in Mozambique, contributing around 25 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, despite the considerable agro-ecological potential and the need for increased production, agricultural productivity remains low. The prevailing gap between domestic food production and demand, as well as lagging exports, continue to pose significant challenges. As part of efforts to deal with these challenges, the government and other agriculture sector stakeholders have recognized the crucial role of extension services in increasing productivity. The government plays an important role in the extension system through the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG). This paper assesses critical factors that constrained the successful implementation of the National Agrarian Extension Program, (PRONEA, from Programa Nacional de Extensao Agraria), by MINAG's National Directorate of Agrarian Extension (DNEA, from Direccao Nacional de Extensao Agraria), which resulted in a decision to halt PRONEA in 2010, three years after its launch. A conceptual framework for planning and implementing programs and strengthening pluralistic agricultural extension and advisory systems identified factors that should ideally have been taken into account before launching PRONEA in order to reduce the risk of failure. The analysis was based on a review of the literature about agricultural extension in Mozambique, official documents, interviews with key informants and experts, and field visits to various provinces. The analysis found that factors related to the conceptualization, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of PRONEA led to its failure and subsequent discontinuation. Overall, the assessment underscores the need for institutional changes to support successful implementation of public agricultural extension programs. To be noted, a redesigned PRONEA started to be implemented in the second half of 2012.

The increasing frequency of extreme climate events such as droughts and floods, as well as increasing temperatures and declining rainfall, are the expected future weather patterns of climate change hot spots such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change and variability hot spot areas will be most vulnerable to diminishing crop production and water resources as most people in these areas depend on rainfed agriculture for their livelihoods.While much of climate change studies have been done at global scale, the impacts of climate change and variability will be felt locally at community level. In most cases adaptation occurs at local level in ways that are usually unnoticed and unaided by national governments or international organisations. This study down-scales the vulnerability of and adaptive capacity to climate change and variability to local level applying the Household Economy Approach. The focus is on local dimensions of climate change impact on water and agriculture in Western Zambia. A climate change vulnerability zone map is delineated using GIS, and a detailed profile of the zones is presented. The focus is on how communities cope with comparable climate change risks that occur today, like droughts, floods and pests, and then gauge their capacity to mitigate future CC shocks. Some adaptive measures that can be adopted to mitigate climate change impacts are recommended. The results equip policy makers with information on the impacts of climate change at local level, and capacitate them with a tool to make informed intervention.

The increasing frequency of extreme climate events such as droughts and floods, as well as increasing temperatures and declining rainfall, are the expected future weather patterns of climate change hot spots such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change and variability hot spot areas will be most vulnerable to diminishing crop production and water resources as most people in these areas depend on rainfed agriculture for their livelihoods. While much of climate change studies have been done at global scale, the impacts of climate change and variability will be felt locally at community level. In most cases adaptation occurs at local level in ways that are usually unnoticed and unaided by national governments or international organisations. This study down-scales the vulnerability of and adaptive capacity to climate change and variability to local level applying the Household Economy Approach. The focus is on local dimensions of climate change impact on water and agriculture in Western Zambia. A climate change vulnerability zone map is delineated using GIS, and a detailed profile of the zones is presented. The focus is on how communities cope with comparable climate change risks that occur today, like droughts, floods and pests, and then gauge their capacity to mitigate future CC shocks. Some adaptive measures that can be adopted to mitigate climate change impacts are recommended. The results equip policy makers with information on the impacts of climate change at local level, and capacitate them with a tool to make informed intervention.

Increasing temperatures and declining rainfall patterns as well as increasing frequency of extreme climate events such as droughts and floods are the expected future weather patterns within the tropics. Africa, particularly Southern Africa, is projected to be the region most vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change especially in agriculture and water. This has dire consequences as most people in Southern Africa depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. While much of climate change studies have been done at global scale, the impacts of climate change and variability will be felt locally at household, community,national and regional levels. In most cases adaptation occurs at local level in ways that are usually unnoticed and unaided by national governments or international organisations. This paper down-scales the vulnerability of and adaptive capacity to climate change and variability to local level (household, community, national and regional) applying the Household Economy Approach (HEA). The focus is on local dimensions of climate change impact on water availability and agriculture productivity in Southern Africa, but taking only a sample of the region. In addition, an assessment of the factors that determine the capacity of local communities to deal with current and future climate changes and variability is made. Adaptive measures are also recommended, paying special attention to the role of local institutions in adapting to climate change. This paper emphasises the importance of ensuring that farmers have access to relevant knowledge and information on the effects of climate variability and change in order to enhance their adaptive capacity.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, along with other African countries, have recognized and prioritized the agriculture sector as key to overall economic growth, poverty reduction, and enhancing food security and have accordingly committed themselves to implement several regionally, continentally and internationally shared targets or goals. These include the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under CAADP, put together by the African Union's New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (AU/NEPAD) and signed by African states in 2003, African governments committed to achieving annual agricultural growth of at least 6%. In order to ensure that sufficient resources were made available for the CAADP implementation, countries signed the AU Maputo Declaration in 2003 in which they agreed to increase national budgetary resources to the agriculture sector to at least 10% of their respective national budgets by 2008. The principle behind CAADP is to use agriculture-led growth to achieve the first MDG of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, a goal that is also set by SADC RISDP. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI2; ReSAKSS SA

This paper charts the performance of the agriculture sector in Malawi for the period 2000 – 2013 (with particular attention paid to the last three to four years of the said period). In the quest to attain this aim the paper empirically focuses on the significance of mapping the performance of the sector in the form of trends against the baseline sectoral performance targets enlisted in the ASWAP, CAADP Framework and SADC RISDP. The consistent and concerted efforts by the Government of Malawi and development partners to meet the ASWAP, CAADP framework and SADC RISDP targets have resulted in the country making commendable economic growth and poverty alleviation. The country has been able to attain the 6% agricultural growth target despite the questionable quality of public expenditure. It is also interesting to note that changes in the agriculture sector appear to have had influence on incomes, poverty and malnourishment. The trend analysis led to the following findings; the growth in agricultural GDP and the annual GDP growth of the country surpassed the CAADP target of 6% annual growth and this culminated to an increase in production (cereal and livestock production) and productivity (land productivity) despite the fact that the country has not met the irrigation and fertiliser used targets. This increase in production and productivity may be earnestly attributed substantially public invested in the agriculture sector to meet the CAADP 10% target of the total budget to agriculture. However, this increase in agricultural GDP annual growth has not had a significant bearing on the country's battle to offset poverty; the country's GHI is still serious and the proportion of the population below the minimum dietary energy consumption is still high (23% on average) whilst the MDG I target stands at 20%. The major deduction from these findings is that there is a need for more concerted efforts in Malawi to refine agricultural growth investments; this can be carried out efficiently by developing a National Agriculture Plan (NAP) which will be a single policy tool that will guide investment and implementation of priorities in the sector.

This paper sets out to analyses and present trends in investments in agriculture in the SADC region. In pursuing this goal the paper empirically highlights the importance of disaggregating expenditure data when examining its links to measures of productivity and poverty. This is important because not all types of expenditure have the potential to positively impact on productivity and poverty. In order to pursue the goals set out in this paper, analysis focused mainly on data on agricultural public expenditure for Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Trend analysis leads to the following main findings: Various countries have tended to invest in their agricultural sectors differently across time, but investments have been limited and volatile, while the quality of spending has also gone down. There is also public agricultural expenditure bias towards crops at the expense of other sectors. The major implication is that there is need for more concerted efforts in the SADC to ensure more and better-targeted agricultural growth enhancing investments.

This paper examines the impact of government sectoral expenditure on economic growth in Malawi. Using time series data from 1980 to 2007, cointegration analysis in the context of an error correction model was employed to estimate the growth effects of government expenditures in agriculture, education, health, defence, social protection and transport and communication. The short run results showed no significant relationship between government sectoral expenditure and economic growth. The long run results showed a significant positive effect on economic growth of expenditure on agriculture and defence. The expenditures on education, health, social protection and transportation and communication were negatively related to economic growth. To boost economic growth efficient management of resources allocated to all sectors should be emphasized.

An in-depth quantitative analysis is undertaken in this paper to assist the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat, member countries, and development partners in setting future regional investment priorities for agricultural research and development in the SADC region. A primary goal of this work was to identify a range of agricultural research priorities for achieving sector productivity and overall economic growth in southern Africa, at both the country and regional levels. This is accomplished by adopting an integrated modeling framework that combines a disaggregated spatial analytical model with an economywide multimarket model developed specifically for the region. The spatial disaggregation uses information on current yield gaps to project growth and technology spillovers across countries among different agricultural activities that share similar conditions and thus potential for adoption and diffusion in the region. The economywide multimarket model is used to simulate ex ante the economic effects of closing these yield gaps through a country's own investments in research and development (R&D) and from potential R&D spill-ins from neighboring countries. Results indicate a high potential of spillovers and technology adaptability across countries due to similar agroecological and climatic conditions and the countries' own capacities for adaptive R&D. The greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities reside in staple crops and in roots and tubers, especially among the low-income countries. Together, these sectors have the potential to contribute up to 40 percent of future possible growth. There are differences (areas of comparative advantage) at the country level that offer opportunities for specialization. For example, grains are the dominant subsector for Zimbabwe; in Botswana, opportunities will depend on more growth in its livestock sector; and for Namibia promoting fish growth may be more important. The root crops sector is as important as that of grains in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Malawi, but even more important in Mozambique. The study finds evidence of high spillover potential, especially for maize, rice, cattle, cassava, sorghum, and beans. Low-income countries gain the most from spill-in of R&D in the grains and roots subsectors; yield growth in these subsectors explains about 20 percent of these countries' gains in the total value of production, compared with only 2.2 percent among middle-income countries. Our results emphasize not only the importance of expanding regional cooperation in R&D and technology diffusion in southern Africa, but the importance of strengthening regional agricultural markets and linkages with nonagricultural sectors.

The fight against poverty remains the key development goal of the Government of Mozambique (GoM). Success in the transformation of the agriculture sector is considered a necessary condition for meeting the goal because agriculture and poverty are closely related. About 80% of the population heavily depends on agriculture as their primary source of livelihood, and about 73% lives in rural areas. Currently, the level of agricultural productivity is low compared to that in other developing countries, including southern African countries. The low level of crop productivity is not surprising given the dependency on rain-fed agriculture and the limited use of fertilizers and improved seeds. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; ReSAKSS