Strengthening Regional Agricultural Integration in West Africa (SRAI) - Phases 1 & 2
The SRAI 2 program builds upon the results of the first phase of SRAI, which ran from January 2009 through December 2012. This work is funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. The first phase of this work focused on research and outreach on constraints to regional agricultural trade in West Africa in the aftermath of the 2008 world food crisis, effective transmission of price incentives to West African farmers, the competitiveness of West African cereal production in the post-crisis period and how West African consumers adapted to the food crisis. The work identified the weak links between farmers and agro processors as a key constraint to effective transmission of incentives to farmers and spotlighted the heavy investment and policy interest of West African governments in boosting rice production to substitute for imports.
Building on these results, SRAI 2 has three analytic and outreach themes
- Evolution of food demand in West Africa and its implications for development of agro processing.
- Evolution of the Asian rice market and its policy implications for rice development efforts in West Africa.
- Alternative models of value-chain organization that link smallholders more effectively to markets.
The SRAI 2 program is implemented by MSU faculty, graduate research assistants, staff and African partners, both from the campus in East Lansing and from the MSU office in Bamako. The work is synergistic with other research and outreach on food security in West Africa carried out by the MSU team and financed by USAID, IFAD, the Gates Foundation, the European Union, FAO and ECOWAS.
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