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The population of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is currently estimated at 1.2 billion people,1 and is projected to double by 2050. The continent’s smallholder farmers (SHF) account for 60% of the population,2 and produce 80% of the food consumed.3 These figures highlight the critical role that agriculture and SHF play in the continent’s food security and development.

The White House–led Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative brings new energy and a comprehensive approach to our mission at USAID.

The Feed the Future Malawi Ag Diversification Activity worked with partners to develop an input bundle and a loan package to help farmers increase their soybean and groundnut yields.

This post offers recommendations on managing the shifts in culture, management and partnering needed when a project shifts from providing direct services to a facilitative market systems approach.

How can donors play a role in helping companies adapt to these unpredictable environments? Partnering for Innovation’s pay for performance approach integrates adaptive management into the design of its partnerships agreements.

Even in a good year, when the weather cooperates and pests are held at bay, the world’s farmers face another threat: prices.

Explore USAID's recently released interactive online resource to complement The Guide to the Use of Digital Financial Services in Agriculture!

Learn how Feed the Future Malawi Mobile Money Project takes a strategic approach to building mobile money networks through building capacity for service providers, banks, and regulators.

Why are there such stark discrepancies between official statistics and specialized market research on wage labor? FAO's Bernd Mueller explains.

Have the financial and business service sectors gone far enough to “read” the unique needs of agricultural small and medium enterprises? Find out what Chris Chibwana thinks.

How does one make sense of a messy and chaotic agricultural small and medium enterprise landscape? Check out these insights from Malawi.

This leap into the digital future has been made possible through a progressive alignment between the Kenyan government, the mobile industry, banks, and microfinance institutions.

The goals of the study were to learn how LIFT II could help service providers make efficient, effective, and appropriate referrals to services within the district, and also how to classify clients into categories of household poverty/vulnerability.

The seminar was successful in discussing the encouraging findings revealed so far and in identifying new research needed to unearth additional compelling, robust, welfare-enhancing results that can then guide policy and practice moving forward.

Rebecca Savoie, Land O'Lakes Foundation, speaks on the foundation's current project in rural finance.