In rainfed areas in northern Ghana, yields averaged a mere 1.5 tons per hectare without any improved management practices, but reached 2.6 tons per hectare with the adoption of all recommended management practices, including use of improved seeds, chemical fertilizer, bunding, leveling, and straight-row dibbling. Similarly, management training is found to be effective in rainfed areas in Uganda. It is noteworthy that substantial yield gains have been achieved even in rainfed areas in SSA without accompanying major market reforms or new investments in roads or irrigation systems.

In Table 3, we turn to a broader measure of productivity and examine the effects of improved management practices on profitability, defined as the value of production per hectare minus paid-out cost and imputed costs of owned resources evaluated at the market prices. Because imputing the value of family labor is error-prone, the table also includes income per hectare, which is defined as the value of production minus paid-out cost per hectare. In Tanzania, both income and profit per hectare were significantly higher in irrigated areas compared to rainfed areas. In rainfed areas in Ghana, both income and profit per hectare were significantly higher for full adopters of improved seeds, fertilizer, bunding, leveling, and dibbling than for non-adopters. In Uganda, income per hectare was significantly higher for management training participants. The study also found that training participants adopted improved seeds, chemical fertilizer, and improved management practices more often than the non-participants.

Considerable differences in income and profit between training participants and non-participants and between full adopters and non-adopters suggest that it is profitable to adopt a seed-fertilizer-management (SFM) rice technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. Supporting evidence is provided by the ongoing study on the adoption of intensive rice cultivation system in rainfed areas in Kilombero Valley in Tanzania by Nakano et al. (2015), who also found significantly higher yields and profit per hectare associated SFM technologies.

# **8. Concluding remarks**

Most rural development strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa focus on improving the productivity of smallholder farms. The approach has clear advantages, since it leverages resources already in place in rural communities – primarily land, family labor, farming knowledge and social capital – while the slowpaced dynamics of economic transformation and farm restructuring play out. Importantly, improving smallholder productivity speeds up economic growth and complements programs that prepare rural workers for jobs in other sectors.

With the possible exception of mechanization, technologies that improve overall small-farm productivity usually help farmers achieve higher yields. In general, yield gaps are high in Sub-Saharan Africa and even a partial narrowing could have a significant impact on local and global food supplies. A careful and transparent approach to promoting new commercial farms, carved out from under-utilized land resources, can help improve food supplies over time, but with fewer benefits for economic growth or poverty reduction, and with greater stress on Africa’s natural resources and ecologies.

A key instrument in the pursuit of improving smallholder productivity is the development and dissemination of new technologies. In the case of Asia’s Green Revolution, a small set of technologies had a transformational impact on rural communities and food systems that were land-constrained and structured largely around wheat and rice. In Sub-Saharan Africa, agroclimatic and market conditions are 15