The Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: Issues and Opportunities

Abstract

The time is ripe to pursue a Green Revolution in rice in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a means of promoting food security and poverty reduction. This is partly because rice is an up-and-coming crop in this region, and partly because, as will be demonstrated in this volume, we have now accumulated deep knowledge about rice cultivation in SSA. With the aim of generating relevant policy recommendations, this book attempts to show what needs to be done to realize a rice Green Revolution in SSA. It is based on more than ten years of empirical inquiries into rice production by our research team in selected countries, namely Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal, along with the newly added case of Cote d’Ivoire. This chapter explains why rice is important, provides a conceptual framework for realizing a rice Green Revolution, and proposes several major hypotheses to be tested in this book.