Workshop: IGC Agriculture Group

Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and joint with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the IGC Agriculture Group organised a day long workshop on December 4th 2010 dealing with current research on agriculture and economic development in Africa. Among the workshop participants were scholars from around the globe working on all dimensions of agriculture and development. It was also be attended by a significant number of African scholars from the AERC’s network, thus fostering IGC’s fundamental goal of connecting world-class international researchers with local scholars in developing countries in order to generate more collaborative work on these countries’ most urgent economic problems. In addition to the workshop, a joint IGC-AERC Technical Session will be held on December 3rd 2010 to provide more room for discussion and exchange between the scholars attending the official workshop.

This first workshop of this kind on economics in Africa aimed at increasing the number of research projects that deal with agriculture and development on the continent in order to provide African policymakers with a more solid fundament of robust evidence on this crucial subject. Research papers presented during the workshop will cover pressing topics such as the microeconomics of agricultural productivity, rural organization and technology, as well as agriculture’s role in macroeconomic growth, transformation, and trade. Organising Committee Professor William Lyakurwa, Executive Director, AERC Professor Olusanya Ajakaiye, Director of Research, AERC Professor Tavneet Suri, MIT Sloan and IGC Agriculture Research Programme Co‐Director Professor Christopher Udry, Yale University and IGC Agriculture Research Programme Co‐Director.