Christopher B. Barrett

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a special issue on the topic of income diversification and livelihoods in rural Africa: Cause and Consequence of change, where the authors concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversity and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue.

TL;DR: The authors developed an asset-based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep-rooted, persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the traditional retail and wholesale system in the midst of which emerged modern food retailing and its procurement system, and discuss the determinants of and patterns in the diffusion of supermarkets in the three regions.

TL;DR: This work states that estimated prevalence rates and patterns remain tenuous because measuring food security, an elusive concept, remains difficult.

TL;DR: The authors reviewed the evidence on smallholder market participation, with a focus on staple foodgrains (i.e., cereals) in eastern and southern Africa, in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi-subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural Africa.