Agriculture and farming in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is subject to diverse and complex interactions of social, cultural, economic, political and geo-environmental factors. Some but not all of these factors include a rapidly growing population, creating a huge pressure on the natural resource base (WWF and AfDB 2013), accelerated climate change effects on agriculture and agro-food systems (Morton 2007), and policy and structural constraints mainly affecting smallholder farmers (Jayne et al. 2010). At the same time, changes in educational levels, political governance and institutions, economic policies and markets, and advances in science and technology, particular in the Information, Communications & Technologies (ICTs) sector, have provided a wide array of options for agricultural development in Africa (UNDP 2012). A continental initiative, the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) was adopted by the African Union in 2003 to create ‘a new Vision for African Agriculture’, and the year 2014 was declared the African Year of Agriculture and Food Security to mark the tenth anniversary of CAADP.

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