Advancing Economics, Transforming Lives
News from the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at MSU
January 2009
A Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Brings New Hope to African Food Markets
By Jennifer Allwardt
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been very active in funding development projects world-wide, but has now placed emphasis on food markets with a new $4M initiative with the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. The Gates Foundation is seeking to better understand how resources could be invested to sustainably build food marketing systems to better serve the needs of millions of farmers in Africa. The grant builds on in the department’s longstanding commitment to policy-oriented to research aimed at improving African food markets. The project leaders are Professors Thomas Jayne, Steve Haggblade, David Tschirley, and Duncan Boughton.
The project will provide analysis of African food markets to help identify bottlenecks in the system and options for overcoming them. The MSU faculty and graduate students involved in the project will work closely with locally-based research institutions in each country to build local analytical capacity in the process of undertaking collaborative research and outreach. The project is also intended to inform African policy makers of potential policy and investment options to support the development of food marketing systems in the region.
“If this project succeeds,” Jayne said, “we’ll see many more small farmers in Africa linked up to agriculture markets. We’ll also see more stability in the food system and more urban consumers in Africa getting the food that they need. It can happen, but the right kind of public and private investments need to be put in place to make it happen.”
Five African countries are benefiting from this grant, and several organizations committed to improving markets in agriculture, will also be involved in the project. The five main countries involved are Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, and Mali. These countries have been at the center of research on food marketing at MSU. Often well-intentioned government efforts to assist the poor have unintended consequences, such as destroying incentivies to produce food, or preventing movement local food into areas of highest need. With many lives at stake, it is important to develop a complete understanding of a country’s food marketing system. Local knowledge and capacity building are important components of the project, and so MSU faculty are involved with the Common Market for Eastern Southern Africa (COMESA), the Tegemeo Institute of Egerton University in Kenya, and the Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), along with private sector groups. Each year, four graduate students from the Agricultural Food and Resource Economics program will get the opportunity for hands-on learning. This will allow for these students to gain experience in field work and become more knowledgeable about problems in Africa. |
