Technological, institutional, and policy innovations for raising agricultural productivity and improving food and nutrition security

Français (French)

Many efforts underway to raise agricultural productivity and improve food security and nutrition in Africa are addressing fundamental issues. These efforts include development of high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties, and restoration of degraded areas; designing and implementing decision-support tools, methodologies, and strategies for food security, natural resource management, and water control; addressing gender inequities and improving women’s access to productive resources and markets; developing food-based guidelines for nutritious foods; and provision of emergency food aid and other humanitarian assistance.

While these efforts are laudable, their impact may be limited when the underlying research solutions (technologies, institutions, and policies) are generated in isolation. By taking a food systems approach, the work activities in this strategic research area aim to bring together detailed spatial data—from geo-referenced household surveys to remote-sensing imagery—at the nexus of geography, climate, farming systems, socioeconomics, political economy, and gender to conduct model-based scenario analyses; these analyses provide evidence to help food system actors and stakeholders make investment decisions that raise agricultural productivity and improve food security and nutrition in Africa sustainably.

Activities include:

Analysis of typologies and pathways for food security and nutrition at national, regional, and local levels.
Design of solutions to address food and nutrition security.
Impact evaluation of nutrition and agriculture development projects.
Addressing institutional bottlenecks to technology dissemination and adoption.
Development of tools and methods for analyzing food system trade-offs, as well as indicators and metrics for tracking agricultural productivity and food system outcomes.