In developing countries such as Ethiopia, rural households spend a considerable part of their time in agriculture as well as resource collection.  However, rigorous empirical studies on the impacts of scarcity of environmental resources on productive activities such as agriculture are very limited—in developing countries in general and Africa in particular. Using a panel data set collected from Ethiopia, this paper examines the effect of scarcity of fuelwood and water on time spent in agriculture.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, climate change is set to hit the agricultural sector the most severely and cause suffering, particularly for smallholder farmers. To cushion themselves against potential welfare losses, smallholder farmers need to recognize the changes already taking place in their climate and undertake appropriate investments in adaptation. This study investigates whether these smallholder farmers in Tanzania recognize climate change and, consequently, adapt to it in their agricultural activities.

The study presented here considers the relative efficiency of planting tobacco and maize in the tobacco-producing Tabora region of Tanzania. The study used a 2013 survey that was conducted among smallholder farmers in the Tabora region. The aim was to investigate whether farmers are better off planting tobacco or maize. The paper briefly reviews the importance of agriculture in general and tobacco planting in particular on the Tanzanian economy. The paper then reviews the methodology used in the analysis, The Frontier Production Function.

This article investigates the role of institutional isolation on the adoption of soil conservation technologies in Kenya. The study is based on the theory of induced technical and institutional innovations and on the literature on land tenure security and investment incentives. A multinomial logit model for adoption of various soil conservation investments (SCI) is estimated.

A revised application of Ostrom's (Ostrom, 2007) Social-Ecological System (SES) framework to Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, G. (1968), Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248) demonstrates that its institutional structure is more complex than either Hardin or Ostrom had imagined.

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This paper assesses rural households’ decision to use improved maize varieties in Malawi and examines its impact on household welfare using a three-year household panel data.