Announcement: Farming Systems and Food Security in Africa book

Farming Systems and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa
Priorities for science and policy under global change
Edited by John Dixon, Dennis P. Garrity, Jean-Marc Boffa, Timothy O. Williams, Tilahun Amede
Routledge – 2016 – 640 pages

To be published by Earthscan/Routledge March 2016.

The Routledge book highlights the priorities for science and policy in the agricultural systems of Sub-Saharan Africa to reduce poverty, improve food security and secured livelihoods. ECA’s report proposes new ways of looking at producing food and adding value to produces of African origin and complements the book. The volume provides an essential follow-up to and application of the seminal work Farming Systems and Poverty by Dixon and colleagues for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and World Bank, published in 2001.

Related:

22-24 July 2015. Nairobi. ICRAF headquarters. The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), African Union (AU), World Agro-Forestry Centre (ICRAF) and other technical partners across Africa discussed farming systems reforms in Africa. The meeting involved the participation of about 35 high-level thinkers including scientists, policy makers and development practitioners from the region itself, Europe, Australia and the USA. The meeting produced a comprehensive, up-to-date forward-looking strategy on African farming systems for policy and decision makers, research organisations, development actors and investors.

The expert group based their discussions on ECA’s strategic report: ‘Rethinking Africa’s strategic agricultural commodities production systems in the new global context’ and on the book “Farming Systems and Food Security in Africa” to be published by Earthscan/Routledge March 2016.

Drawing from the ECA report and expert insights, the meeting made recommendations and guidelines on how to turn emerging African production and food systems into a zero loss, zero waste, clean, closed loop economy towards 2063.