Interview : Isaya Maana, Head, Monetary Policy Committee Secretariat, Central Bank of Kenya

Known for being a climate change hotspot, Morocco is at the forefront of a climate disaster. Consequences are already being felt, whether in the form of increasing temperature or a downward trend in precipitations, which directly threaten the water security and, by extension, the social-ecological systems of the country. The systems by which food, energy, and water are produced, distributed, and consumed heavily depend on one another. Their implicit feedbacks and links are not linea ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed new vulnerabilities in social, infrastructure, and governance systems. In the first months of the pandemic, there was a genuine concern about the capacity of the Global South to contain the spread of the virus. African cities were particularly vulnerable, with some experts1, including the head of WHO2, predicting a catastrophe for the continent. Despite the structural and chronic challenges that African cities face, including informality, poverty, a ...

Food security for all requires (i) sustained productivity growth and competitiveness, not only of agriculture but of the entire economy; (ii) a social safety net; and (iii) resilience in the face of periodic shocks. This is the central message of this review. Two popular concepts in food security for all are food self-sufficiency (FSS) and food sovereignty (FSY). While countries have pursued different policies to achieve FSS, the common element in their approaches is the misguided ...

Les cours des matières premières ont, une fois encore, été marqués par une importante volatilité en 2017 et 2018. Si de nombreux facteurs économiques permettent de l’expliquer, la raison politique fut également bien présente. Les Annual Report tensions commerciales entre la Chine et les États-Unis on Commodity et, plus globalement, la montée des incertitudes ont pesé Analytics and sur les perspectives macroéconomiques mondiales et sur Dynamics « le dynamisme des marchés ». Comptant ...

“This article has been originally published in 'Morocco in Focus 2018,' the magazine of the Moroccan Embassy in New Delhi, India on the occasion of the Morocco National Day 2018.” Introduction In an article published last year, the author stressed the role of partnership between Morocco and India for the inclusive growth of small farmers. There is no doubt that agriculture remains a major instrument for human development both in India and in Africa. Several international reports h ...

The irony facing many developing countries today is that increased food trade and the implications of globalization has created a situation where certain segments of the population are simply put, eating too much, while just in their proximity lies a more significant segment of the population who are suffering from the complete opposite, malnutrition. This policy brief aims at explaining this double sided sword. ...

The second United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) includes the goal to: “End hunger and achieve food security and improved nutrition” by 2030. While such an ambitious goal will clearly involve a wide range of policies and actors, this policy brief focuses on the role of trade policies in affecting food and nutrition security. Extensive and frequently contentious, debate swirls about whether trade in agricultural products is beneficial or detrimental for food security, pa ...

In June 2017, the second Annual Report on Commodity Analytics and Dynamics In Africa (Arcadia report) was published, in collaboration between the OCP Policy Center and CyclOpe. Its aim is to annually report on the evolution of the economic, legal, financial and societal links between Africa and the world commodity markets, both with regard to the cyclical changes in the markets, and to the structural changes or failures that may have emerged. Focusing on 2016 and early 2017, the Arc ...

OCP Policy Center and its partners, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED) at the New York University are pleased to announce the publication of a Special Issue on "Food Price Volatility and its Consequences" in Oxford Economic Papers. The papers selected in this special issue were first presented in February 2014 at an international conference organized in Rabat in collaboration with the IMF's Research Department and  t ...

The 16th Annual Global Development Conference has been dedicated this year to the theme of ‘Agriculture for Sustainable Growth: Challenges and Opportunities for a New ‘Green Revolution’.  One of the sub-themes that has been addressed during this event is related to the design of the optimal agricultural policy supposed to lead towards development, especially in low-income countries. The objective of this blog is to cover the key elements that make an agricultural policy successful a ...