Exploring strategic priorities for regional agricultural R&D investments in East and Central Africa

Liangzhi You and Michael Johnson

No 776, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: "Agriculture plays a dominant role in nearly all the countries of East and Central Africa, and many face similar agroecological, climatic, and development challenges. As a result, significant scale economies can be made through the regionalization of research and development (R&D) using networks such as the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa. The challenge for such networks, however, is to determine both regional and national research priorities with the highest potential rates of economic return. Methodology to assess regional research priorities is a critical input into this process, particularly when it comes to weighing likely complementarities among individual research programs, thus maximizing impact across countries at the regional level. This paper presents such an approach using spatial analysis and the Dynamic Research Evaluation for Management (Dream) modeling software, which was developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute to assess potential economic returns to agricultural R&D and guide resource allocation decisions. Dream is applied to the East and Central African region to estimate potential economic and technological spillovers from country- and regional-level R&D investments for select commodities based on future projections of supply and demand, trade flows between countries and world markets, and shared agroecologies and farming systems. The results of the study indicate significant potential for agricultural technology spillovers within the region. Countries will therefore reap greater economic benefits in their search for technology solutions if they pool their resources and pursue regional initiatives for the common good." from Author's Abstract

Keywords: models; technology transfer; agricultural research; Central Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/161748

Related works:
Journal Article: Exploring strategic priorities for regional agricultural R&D investments in East and Central Africa (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:776

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().