Center for Effective Global Action

The objective of this introduction is to put the May 2009 conference "on Agriculture for Development" in perspective of current and expected changes in the broad process of using agriculture for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is to help the conference achieve its two main purposes: assess the frontiers of research in economics applied to agricultural development and smallholder competitiveness; and establish research priorities for future efforts in that direction. It uses the WDR 2008 as a starting point for this task.