Economic Report on Africa 2009: Developing African agriculture through regional value chains

[Knowledge base]

The Economic Report on Africa 2009 (ERA 2009) is organized into two parts:

Part I examines global economic developments and their implication for Africa  (chapter 1), analyses recent economic and social trends (chapter 2) and highlights emerging development challenges to the continent in 2008 (chapter 3).

The thematic part of this edition of ERA, Part II, is devoted to the issue of regional value chain development and starts with a discussion in chapter 4 of the need to address challenges to developing African agriculture in the context of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (AU/NEPAD).

ERA 2009 then focuses on the question of how to enhance structural transformation of African agriculture through systematic efforts to develop regionally integrated value chains and markets for selected strategic food and agricultural commodities (chapter 5). Finally, the report urges African governments to operationalize commitments to develop agriculture, and suggests strategies.