When people think of West Africa, cocoa often comes to mind: a crop that shapes rural livelihoods, national economies, and the global chocolate industry. Across major producing countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Guinea, millions of families depend on the harvest each year. Together, these countries generate over 60% of global cocoa output, making the region the engine of global supply.
In May 2025 in Malawi, Mercy Phiri joined the Business Acceleration for Youth project expecting entrepreneurs to chase grants. Instead, working with 61 MSMEs, she discovered they were not lacking ambition, but systems and scale.
When floodwaters washed away Woudou Oumar’s home in northern Cameroon, he and his family lost not only shelter but hope. Then a government-supported cash transfer arrived.
As the global community grapples with a “polycrisis” of climate change, geopolitical instability, and rising food insecurity, the traditional tools of agricultural development are hitting a wall. For decades, the primary strategy of agricultural research for development (AR4D) has been a “hard” mechanistic approach: developing a high-tech solution and attempting to scale it linearly across the globe. However, a groundbreaking new study published in Agricultural Systems suggests that this reductionist mindset is no longer enough to transform our food systems.
Indian agricultural policy has long worked with a neat fiction: a single, rational decision-maker called “the farmer” who receives information, weighs costs and benefits, and decides whether the household should adopt a new technology.
Bangladesh’s coastal belt is home to rich marine biodiversity and millions of people whose lives are tied to the sea
Livestock are at the heart of rural livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa. From pastoral systems in drylands to mixed crop–livestock farms in high-potential areas, cattle, sheep, and goats provide food, income, traction, manure, and social security for millions of households. Yet despite hosting nearly a quarter of the world’s ruminants, the region produces less than 3% of global meat and milk. One reason stands out above all others: A chronic shortage of quality livestock feed.
