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Highlights

As successive editions of the African Economic Outlook have shown, Africa's rate of growth has outperformed the global rate over the last decade. Yet high growth is not sufficient to guarantee productive employment for all. Large sections of the population, and particularly the young, can be left behind and become frustrated.

In the absence of a political process allowing them to express their views and produce policy changes, instability can result, as it did last year in a number of North African countries. This is an opportune time to reset the policy agenda of African governments towards an inclusive, employment-creating and sustainable growth strategy, aimed particularly at addressing the special needs of the young.

Enrollment is booming at many colleges of agriculture, as students flock to study subjects they feel offer a clear path to a job on graduation.

Ag-related college majors appeal to both the heart and mind of a student, university officials say, as a booming agriculture industry and practical skills taught at the colleges can help develop a career that addresses issues such as global hunger and obesity in the U.S.

Michel Dorlean, a Haitian horticulturalist, grew up learning the family business of planting and growing flowers on hillside plots in his mountainous hometown of Furcy. Despite all the intensive work that goes into cultivating flowers, Michel and many other local flower producers struggled each year to reach their full earning potential.

The traditional hillside plots left their flowers vulnerable to excessive heat, humidity, and rain; Michel used to lose upwards of 8 percent of his flower yields. The massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 made matters worse, leading to a dramatic drop in prices that nearly forced farmers in Furcy to abandon flower production for more profitable crops.

 

Mobile Agriculture was on the agenda for the first time at Mobile World Congress 2012, the world’s largest event for the mobile industry where over 67,000 visitors attended from 205 countries. On Tuesday 28th February around 150 people from the mobile industry and the development sector attended the GSMA mAgri Programme’s seminar “Mobile Agriculture: The Market Opportunity” where a panel of leading practitioners shared emerging best practices and business rationale for developing Agricultural Value Added Services (Agri VAS)[1] in emerging markets. This post provides a summary of the seminar with highlights from each of the panelists. Videos of the presentations and a webinar showing analysis and highlights are available to watch on the GSMA mAgri website.  

TONGWE, Tanzania (AlertNet) - Changing weather patterns have forced farmers in Muheza district in Tanzania to move away from growing traditional crops and switch to cassava, which is playing an increasing role in lifting communities out of poverty.

With help from agricultural experts, farmers are learning to cultivate drought-resistant varieties of cassava with enough success that they can feed their family and reap economic dividends from processing and selling their crop surplus.