Foresight for African Agriculture
I have undertaken a number of studies which have looked at the dynamics of supply, demand and trade in a number of African countries, using mostly model-based approaches. The focus of these studies has been, primarily, on illustrating key constraints to agricultural supply and productivity growth, and showing the implications for consumption, welfare and food security. The main aim of such studies is to illustrate where important opportunities for research, investment and policy reform exist, and what the implications of those interventions are.
Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa
I led a study, funded by the Australian Center for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) that undertook a model-based analysis to examine investment options that support better food security outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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I presented the results of that study at a conference on Food Security in Africa held in Sidney in November 2012, at which a new center on food security in Africa was launched. The conference paper can be found here. A link to the presentation (powerpoint) that I made can be found here. You can also watch and listen to the full conference presentation here.
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The final report for the ACIAR project can be found here, and contains more details about the underlying components of the study -- including the outputs of a workshop on foresight for African agriculture that drew in a number of experts in the region.
Foresight as a research and planning tool
I have used model-based foresight and projection methods in a lot of my empirical work on African agriculture -- especially when asking questions that entail long-run environmental changes, policy-regime shifts and forward-looking investments.
Here is an article I wrote in 2014 on the uses of foresight as a research and planning tool.
I have had the opportunity to work on a number of forward looking studies that ask questions about global economic and environmental change and the implications for human welfare. One of these was the 4th Global Environmental Outlook of UNEP (GEO-4), in which I used IFPRI's global agricultural market model to simulate the supply, demand and trade trajectories of global agriculture under alternative socio-economic scenarios. I also did similar work (using the IFPRI model) for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), and was part of the advisory committee for a more recent assessment of land use and food security to 2050 (Agrimonde-Terra), co-lead by the French Center for International Agricultural Research and Development (CIRAD) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).