USAID Contributes to Building National Capacity to Strengthen Food Security: An Example from Mali

Duncan H. Boughton (), John M. Staatz and Michael T. Weber ()

No 11, International Development Policy Syntheses from Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University

Abstract: Sustained increases in agricultural productivity are a necessary foundation and a powerful catalyst for broad-based economic growth and long-term food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The development and transfer of improved technology to farmers, and other private sector actors who supply inputs or process and market farmers' production, are crucial to achieve those increases. The Institut d'Economie Rurale (IER) in Mali has, through a radical set of organizational reforms, re-invented public sector agricultural research and the way researchers relate to their clients. These reforms have included a reduction in the number of researchers, re-grading of personnel by external review panels, the introduction of performance-based renewable contracts, financial management reform, decentralization of research management, and the formation of client advisory groups at the regional level to guide research program design and evaluation. IER's reforms make it the pioneer National Agricultural Research System (NARS) for the INSAH/SPAAR Framework For Action for the Sahel region.

Keywords: food security; food policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996

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