Governments, Farmers and Seeds in a Changing Africa

Within the international community there is a growing awareness of the need for a broader and deeper understanding of the relationship between governments and farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Nowhere in the agricultural sector is this awareness growing more rapidly than in the seed sub-sector. Here the quest for alternatives to the large-scale government seed supply organizations of the 1970s and 1980s is becoming more urgent in the face of Africa’s stagnating crop yields and mounting food deficits.

This book presents the results of the first study to investigate the African seed sector in detail, using case study material from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It provides a new conceptual approach to analyzing structural and organizational issues in the seed sector; assesses the likely impact on the seed sector of the two trends of structural adjustment and greater emphasis on community participation; and explains the policy lessons for organizing the delivery of inputs such as seeds.