Guiding Investments in Sustainable Agricultural Markets in Africa : GISAMA

• Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’s (COMESA), Comprehensive African
  Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP)

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is the coordinating partner for outreach and policy discussion of research findings under GISAMA in eastern and southern Africa. COMESA currently has 21 member states. COMESA is envisaged as the main platform for policy discussion of GISAMA research findings with governments in the region.

• Egerton University / Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development

The Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development is the leading agricultural policy institute in Kenya.  Under GISAMA, Tegemeo and MSU are collaborating on research and outreach activities relating to the maize and horticultural value chains in Kenya.

• Permanent Interstate Committee to Combat Drought in the Sahel (CILSS)

CILSS is an inter-state organization that includes 9 member countries in the Sahel region of West Africa (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal).  Its mandate is to foster collaborative research and policy discussions among national researchers and policy makers in the member states concerning sustainable agricultural development and natural resource management.  It works particularly with national agricultural research systems and ministries of agriculture and trade. 

• University of Malawi, Department of Agricultural Economics

The University of Malawi has carried out research on a wide range of issues affecting rural food security in the country.  MSU will work with Dr. Julius Mangisoni and selected other staff, as identified by Dr. Mangisoni, in conceiving carrying out, and writing-up the maize and horticulture subsector studies and in outreach within the country and regionally. Dr. Mangisoni will also work with Dr. Tschirley of MSU in assessing promising or successful supply chain investments and identifying investment priorities for horticultural systems in the region. 

• University of Pretoria, Bureau of Food and Agricultural Policy

The Bureau of Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) BFAP is an independent research unit involving the University of Pretoria; the University of Stellenbosch; the Department of Agriculture, Western Cape; and the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI).  BFAP and MSU are collaborating under GISAMA to compile a 5-year outlook for selected staple commodities in southern Africa. This baseline will be generated in a large-scale partial equilibrium model that captures the salient features and inter-spatial dynamics of the Southern African region. 

• University of Zambia

To investigate the dynamic trajectories of successful smallholder farmers in Zambia, MSU researchers will collaborate with two professors from the University of Zambia. Professor Diana Banda, of the UNZA Department of Sociology, and Priscilla Hamukwala, lecturer in UNZA's Department of Agricultural Economics, will work together with Professor Steven Haggblade of MSU's Department of Agricultural Economics to design, execute and write up the results of this study.