Aminou Arouna

• Dr. sc. agr., Dipl. sc. agr.
• Program Leader and Impact Assessment Economist at Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

Following the food price crisis in 2008, African governments implemented policies aiming at crowding in investment in rice value chain upgrading to help domestic rice compete with imports. We assess the state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa by reviewing evidence on rice millers' investment in semi-industrial and industrial milling tech...

Purpose: This paper explores the main factors that influence farmers in acquiring agricultural knowledge and adopting technologies with the aim of better understanding the agricultural innovation systems in West Africa. Design/Methodology/Approach: We use data collected between 2013 and 2014 across rice hubs in five West African countries: Benin, Cô...

The dissemination of improved rice varieties could contribute significantly to achieving food security and reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study assesses the number of households and individuals lifted out of poverty and food insecurity. Metadata and primary data collected from sixteen countries were analyzed. A positive impact o...

Adopting digital extension technologies by smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly in Africa, is challenging due to various barriers, such as lack of infrastructure, farmers’ low e-literary, and limited access to technology. Our study addresses farmers’ attitudes toward the adoption of new technological approaches to bypass these...

The world population has experienced several challenges due to different measures, including complete lockdowns, which were taken to contain the 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This paper assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural household livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Data were collected from 2705 rice smallholder pr...

Genebanks serve as both providers of valuable traits for breeding programs and repositories of diverse crop genetic material representing society's agricultural heritage. In this study, we use a Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak mechanism to elicit the willingness‐to‐pay of rice farmers in Côte d'Ivoire for small amounts of African rice ( Oryza glaberrima )...

Iron toxicity is one of the constraints limiting rice production in Africa. This study used a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of an iron toxicity-tolerant variety, named ARICA 6, on different outcomes and investment in modern inputs by smallholder farmers. Two rounds of data were collected from 520 rice-farming households in Guinea...

In 2020, the world witnessed the emergence of one of the most damaging pandemics in recent times, which has been associated with food and nutrition insecurity. When things were somewhat improving two years later, the Russia-Ukraine conflict showed its face in February 2022 with further implications for food and nutrition security. These double shoc...

Various Digital Agricultural Technologies (DAT) have been developed and implemented around the world. This study aims to estimate the overall adoption rate and identify the determinant factors for a better adoption perspective after decades of innovation and dissemination. A systematic review was conducted on published studies that reported adoptio...

Purpose: The study evaluates new approach of digital extension services for the long-term adoption of digital extension technologies. We propose an indirect adoption approach to address following research questions. What socioeconomic factors influence rice farmers' decision to prefer one business profile over another? Which business profile is mos...

Food insecurity and child malnutrition remain persistent problems in sub-Saharan Africa. Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population. However, white rice is poor in micronutrients and records higher glycemic values compared to parboiled rice. An improved parboiling system called “Grain quality enhancer, Energy-efficient and...

Food insecurity and child malnutrition remain persistent problems in sub-Saharan Africa. Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world's population. However, white rice is poor in micronutrients and records higher glycemic values compared to parboiled rice. An improved parboiling system called "Grain quality enhancer, Energy-efficient and d...

Fish farming is promoted in the Republic of Benin to meet the demands of fish consumption and increase exports to neighbouring countries. Targeting fish farm policy interventions to increase the efficiency of heterogeneous fish farming systems is a challenge. Farm type delineation allows for simplifying the diversity in fish farming systems. Multiv...

Inland valleys (IVs) in West African countries have increasingly been used for crop production, including rice cultivation. Though it is widely assumed that IVs have a high potential to contribute to food security of West African countries, a comprehensive assessment of farming systems addressing agricultural, institutional, food security, poverty,...

Rice production has increased significantly with the efforts of international research centers and national governments in the past five decades. Nonetheless, productivity improvement still needs to accelerate in the coming years to feed the growing population that depends on rice for calories and nutrients. This challenge is compounded by the incr...

Adoption and dissemination of new agricultural technologies is associated with two main issues: (i) suitable means for demonstration, and (ii) factors associated with adoption  Study focuses on digitalized decision tool providing personalized advice to rice producer, and modern threshing machine to increase rice farmer efficiency  Study tests ori...

The rise of new agricultural technologies represents an opportunity for agricultural development, especially to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal. However, farmers in developing countries struggle with adopting new agricultural technologies due to several socio-economic factors. This study proposes a service-based business for transfer...

Genebanks both provide genetic resources as inputs to crop breeding programs and also serve as repositories of diverse collections of farmer varieties of crops representing society’s agricultural heritage. We use a lab-in-the-fi eld experiment to investigate how smallholder rice farmers in Côte d’Ivoire value having access to both new advanced rice...

The benchmarking and monitoring of rice production performance indicators are essential for improving rice production self-sufficiency, increasing profitability, reducing labor requirements, optimizing fertilizer inputs, engaging youths in rice production, and increasing the overall sustainability of smallholder rice production systems in countries...

Meeting future global staple crop demand requires continual productivity improvement. Many performance indicators have been proposed to track and measure the increase in productivity while minimizing environmental degradation. However, their use has lagged behind theory, and has not been uniform across crops in different geographies. The consequenc...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a major international health crisis which has resulted in simultaneous economic, social and food security crises. This study aimed to provide a snapshot of the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on smallholder rice farmers in Côte d'Ivoire. Using three survey types (village-level, farmer association level, and house...

Understanding the technology characteristics desirable to farmers to increase the adoption of improved technologies remains a high-priority research issue in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study aimed to quantify farmers’ demand and assessment of the characteristics of rice threshing technologies to enhance the adoption of innovations in Senegal. A...

Genetic improvement has been given high priority in rice research for development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper provides an overview of historical efforts of genetic improvement in SSA focused on improving rice productivity. It further describes yield gain of new rice varieties evaluated in recent field experiments in four selected breedi...

The Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) was initiated as a policy framework with the aim of doubling rice production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2008 to 2018. This paper assesses the contribution of the CARD policy to rice production and forecasts the local rice supply and demand to provide a better understanding of t...

Contract farming has emerged as a popular mechanism to encourage vertical coordination in developing country agriculture. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on its ability to spur structural transformation in rural economies. We present results from a field experiment on contract farming in a developing country. While all contracts have positive eff...

Optimiser l’impact économique et environnemental de la chaîne de valeur riz avec l’outil EX-ACT VC Cette étude est une évaluation multi-impact de la filière riz au Mali sur la période 2020-2030, en se basant sur le cadre d’analyse des chaînes de valeur alimentaire durable (Neven, 2014) et l’outil EX-ACT des chaînes de valeur (Bockel et al., 2017)....

This paper examines whether the adoption of the ASI thresher technology by rice farmers in the Senegal River Valley increases their access to credit and their creditworthiness through various pathways. Mainly, this study seeks to verify the argument that the adoption of technologies that increase factor productivity and production capacity eventual...

Blanket advice on optimal fertilizer application rates has failed to achieve potential yield gains for crop production in much of Sub‐Saharan Africa. However, digital technology now makes it possible to deliver personalized extension services to farmers at a much lower cost. We present results from a randomized control trial designed to evaluate th...

La production du riz sous contrat a pour avantage de répondre aux exigences de la qualité de la production du riz et de satisfaire la demande intérieure du riz pour le pays. Cette étude a pour objectif d’analyser les critères d’insolvabilité des contrats des riziculteurs au Burkina Faso. L’enquête terrain a concerné un échantillon aléatoire de 400...

Rice plays a strategic role in food security in West Africa. However, the region increasingly relies on rice imports due to a growing and structural deficit, and domestic value chains face constrains on technology, finance and coordination. As a result, West Africa is very vulnerable to international and local trade disruptions, such as the ones cu...

Agriculture is increasingly adversely affected by climate change. To continue to improve the productivity of staple food crops such as rice, new varieties were developed and introduced in sub-Saharan African countries. This study assessed the impact of drought-tolerant rice varieties (DTRV) on the livelihood of smallholder farmers. Instead of the t...

The paper presents a dataset of the e-registration of rice value chain actors in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire for assessing the adoption of innovations and the diffusion of new rice technologies. Data were collected from actors after a census conducted in three steps. In the first step, main rice production regions and rice value chain actors were ident...

Blanket advice on optimal fertilizer application rates has failed to achieve potential yield gains for crop production in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, digital technology now makes it possible to deliver personalized extension services to farmers at a much lower cost. We present results from a randomized control trial designed to evaluate th...

Information on comprehensive evaluation of agricultural innovations is often limited. This study provides an overview of multidisciplinary evaluation of a lowland rice variety, WITA 9 (released in Côte d’Ivoire in 1998), with respect to its agronomic performance, grain quality, resistance to diseases, adoption by farmers, impact on productivity and...

Low productivity is the main characteristic of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Adverse effects of climate change increasingly reduce both productivity and production. Rice plays an important role in the food security of population. However, rice production faces many constraints, including low water control and soil fertility management. In orde...

As staple food of the majority of the world's population, rice plays today an important role in food security in several African countries including Benin. Local production is, however, limited by many constraints including low productivity. To improve productivity, new technologies have been introduced such as the "Sawah" system. This study aims t...

Ce papier évalue l'impact de l'adoption de la nouvelle technologie Smart-valley pour l'aménagement des basfondssur les conditions de vie des riziculteurs du Bénin. En effet, Smart-valley est une technologie rizicole introduite par AfricaRice pour résorber les effets néfastes des changements climatiques et la faible productivité de la riziculture de...

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Production activities and rice processing are done in Benin with inefficient and strenuous traditional technologies. Bad threshing operation in Benin affects the quality of rice. This study aims at evaluating the technical and technological performances of the ASI axial flow thresher-cleaner in farmer's field. The improved met...

In developing countries, smallholder farmers face many constraints including lack of information, and lack of access to credit and markets. To overcome these constraints, smallholder farmers can engage in contract farming. However, contract farming needs to meet farmers’ preferences in order to be sustainable. This study aimed to analyze rice farme...

Analysis of rice cropping systems in lowland ecology in Gagnoa, in the Middle West of Côte d’Ivoire aims a better understanding of agricultural practices, estimation of technical and economic performance and identification of constraints of rice production. This study was done in the rice hub of Gagnoa. Focus-group and household level interviews wi...

Alleviate poverty, particularly in rural areas, is a major preoccupation for development actors. Reaching this goal is made difficult due to the low farm productivity. One way to improve farmers’ wellbeing through poverty alleviation is to increase the use of improved varieties with potential effect, the rising of farms’ productivity. The seeds of...

In developing countries, smallholder farmers face many constraints including lack of information, and lack of access to credit and markets. To overcome these constraints, smallholder farmers can engage in contract farming. However, contract farming needs to meet farmers' preferences in order to be sustainable. This study aimed to analyze rice farme...

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Production activities and rice processing are done in Benin with inefficient and strenuous traditional technologies. Bad threshing operation in Benin affects the quality of rice. This study aims at evaluating the technical and technological performances of the ASI axial flow thresher-cleaner in farmer's field. The improved met...

Improving farmers’ knowledge of new technologies and creating conducive learning opportunities, with particular attention to the marginalized poor (women and youth), are major factors in the move towards sustainable agriculture. To explore the gender gap in agricultural knowledge acquisition and adoption in West Africa, we used baseline data collec...

This study evaluated the impact of improved rice varieties adoption on the multidimensional poverty index of rice farming households in North Central Nigeria. Stratified random sampling technique was employed to select 149 rice farming households in the study area. Data were collected by trained enumerators using Mlax application installed in table...

To meet rising demand for rice, it is estimated that the global rice production needs to increase by 116 million tons by 2035. Much of the increase has to come from smallholder rice farmers in developing countries. In this article, we review 25 evaluation studies on new rice technologies and practices that have been tried and used by smallholder ri...

In Benin, the dissemination of high yield varieties of rice increased in response to the growing demand for this crop. These varieties assessed by the research favor the increase of rice yield. To this end, the seed of these varieties requires a periodical renewal in the structures guarantying the certification. From this fact, there exists in one...

Market access is a major constraint of smallholder rice producers in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder rice producers face low price due to lack of information on price and technologies, lack of connection to established markets, distortion of input and output markets and lack of access to both consumption and production credits. There is increasing...

Climate change threatens the stability and productivity of agricultural production systems. Rice is dependent on total rainfall. This study aims to assess the impact of climate change on rice income using the Ricardian approach in the zone of fisheries (agro-ecological zone 8), in southern Benin. The study areas are the districts of Adjohoun, Aguég...

In developing countries, production in sufficient quantity of food crops enables smallholder farmers not only to feed the households but also to sell the surplus to generate income. Unfortunately, production and marketing of food crops in these countries faced several problems. To address this situation, producers could use contract farming. This s...

To meet rising demand, it is estimated that global rice production needs to increase by 116 million tons by 2035, and much of this increase has to come from smallholder rice farmers in developing countries. In this article, we review 30 studies that have evaluated new rice technologies and practices that are already tried and used by farmers in dev...

In developing countries, smallholder farmers face many constraints including lack of information, access to credit and to markets. To overcome these constraints, resource-poor farmers can engage in contract farming. However, contracts farming need to meet farmers’ demand in order to be sustainable. This study aimed to analyze the preferences of ric...

This study aimed to assess the impact of climate change on rice income in four West African countries. The paper used the Ricardian approach to measure the relationship between the net income and climate variables (temperature and precipitation), soil characteristics, and socio-economic variables. Two models (with climate variables interaction and...

This study examines the relationship between adoption of NERICA varieties and the Total Factor Productivity among men and women. Data were collected from 342 rice farmers randomly selected in the central and northwest Benin. Total Factor Productivity was estimated using a Cobb-Douglass production function. The impact was estimated using the Local A...

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between rice cropping systems and rice farmers' health to anticipate a possible public health problem that may arise in the long term because of rice production conditions in West Africa. Three thousand and fifty-four rice farmers in ten Rice Sector Development Hubs distributed in ten West...

Face aux difficultés d’approvisionnement des producteurs en semences de qualité et en quantité suffisante, la production des semences certifiées du riz a été décentralisée et ramenée à la base avec l’implication des producteurs. Ainsi, les producteurs ont été formés et agréés pour la production des semences certifiées. Cette étude vise à évaluer l’...

In Africa, climate change threatens the stability and the productivity of agricultural production systems. Both endogenous and exogenous strategies were used by farmers against climate change. This study aims to analyze these strategies and identify policy measures which can enhance and optimize farmers’ capacities for adaptation to climate change....

This paper estimates households’ willingness to pay (WTP) to improve rural water supply in Benin. Particular attention is given to the distribution of WTP, which is traditionally addressed using parametric assumptions. To avoid distributional assumptions, a semi-nonparametric bivariate probit approach is introduced. Results provide the first eviden...

In Africa, climate change is threatening the stability and productivity of agricultural production systems. Consequently, producers are adopting indigenous knowledge coupled to orthodox scientific methods. This study analyzed some of these strategies and also identified some policy measures that could assist in optimizing the capacity of the farmin...

Maize is the main cultivated crop in Benin and represents a main component of population diet in Southern-Benin. But the ineffectiveness of traditional post-harvest technologies increases the post-harvest losses. To reduce post-harvest losses and to allow farmers to have enough quantity of maize for selling, it was introduced in rural areas, improv...

Maize is the staple food of population in Southern Benin. It is also a cash crop. However, important damages due to insects and rodents occur during maize storage and conservation. In order to reduce these losses, improved wooden granaries (with bamboo and mallotus), improved earthen made granaries and sofagrain were introduced in Southern Benin. T...

The importance of farmers’ perceptions of characteristics on agricultural innovation adoption has increased these two decades. Empirical studies revealed that in addition to farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics and institutional factors, farmers’ perceptions of the innovation-specific characteristics are particularly important in determining whet...

This study contributes to the debate regarding the competitiveness of developing countries in the context of globalization. To take advantage of this trend, developing countries will have to position themselves properly through new policies and efficiency in production. In Benin, new orientation of agricultural policy concerns the diversification o...

In many sub-Saharan countries, the dry season is a period characterised by food shortage and low income among resource-poor farmers. To address these problems and reduce poverty in rural areas of Benin, vegetable production in the dry season has been recently promoted by both government and NGO. Vegetable production is an important opportunity of i...

This paper analyzes the determinants of domestic water use in rural areas. The focus is on households without access to private improved water sources. These households use either only free sources, only purchased sources or a combination of free and purchased sources. We also analyze households’ water use behaviors as a function of water availabil...

In West Africa, the Northern Sahelian zone and the coastal areas are densely populated but the Middle Belt in between is in general sparsely settled. Predictions of climate change foresee more frequent drought in the north and more frequent flooding in the coastal areas, while conditions in the Middle Belt will remain moderate. Consequently, the Mi...

Accessibility to safe water remains a major concern in Benin, where only 23% of the population have improved drinking water within the residence. The problem is even more important in rural areas where households have no access to private improved water sources. Based on Benin's good level of per capita water availability (3815 m 3 per year in 2004...

Cassava constitu in Republic of Benin. It is one of the reasons that explain the increase of its growth. The root of cassava deteriorates very quickly after harvest. Only processing including a final drying (ships, "gari", "lafou") permit to conserve this raw material. The present survey aims to design a drier capable to dr and to obtain ships with...

Improving the management of water resources as well as an efficient use of available water are particularly important to address the increasing scarcity of water and the low level of water accessibility in many developing countries. However, better water management requires an understanding of the existing pattern of water use for domestic and agri...