The African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium recently issued its second annual call for "Gaps in Research" Grants. These grants support research on emerging issues in Africa that have previously received little or no attention. The selected topic of this year’s grant is “Barriers to the expansion of agriculture and agroindustry in Africa”.
The grant will support research that promises to fill the existing research gap by shedding light on at least one of the following key aspects of the topic in the context of Africa: impact evaluation of government policy in development of infrastructure for agriculture production, irrigation, and transportation; access to fertilizers; advisability of seed and fertilizer subsidies; case studies concerning rural and agricultural structural projects; impact of regional integration; value chain analysis for key agricultural commodities (moving up the value chain, diversifying exports, enhancing value addition, job creation and economic development).
Innovative proposals will be given priority, particularly those with methodology that extends beyond the traditional representation of an economy under perfect competition, perfect mobility of productive factors, etc. AGRODEP also recommends the use of partial equilibrium models, either commodity-specific or disaggregated at a HS6 level. The grants for gaps in research gives priority to the development of detailed databases in agriculture in order to make them available to the AGRODEP community.
All researchers or research organizations in and outside of Africa are invited to apply. AGRODEP members are also eligible to apply. All proposals must be submitted electronically to grants@agrodep.org by Friday, August 30, 2013. AGRODEP will notify the selected proposals by September 30, 2013.
For further information and proposal guidelines, view the grants page.