Banque Mondiale/World Bank (Washington, DC) GUEST COLUMN By Ousmane Diagana, World Bank Vice President for Western and Central Africa In the heart of sub-Saharan Africa, amidst the fields of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, I bore witness to something truly remarkable: the pioneering work being done to elevate agricultural productivity and ...

Scores of smallholding subsistence farmers face miles of withering crop fields in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Government subsidies can help only so much as solutions prove slow to implement. Rain has finally returned to Malawi after weeks and weeks of severe drought, but it’s too little, too late for local farmer Saidi M’madi. In Malawi’s southern region ...