Research undertaken under the "Food Security in Africa Cooperative Agreement" between the U.S. Agency for International Development (Bureau of Science and Technology and Africa Bureau) and the Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University. The primary objective was to increase food security in developing countries as part of broad-based market orientated, sustainable economic growth. Sub-Goal: To ensure adoption by public and private sector decision makers (including A.LD. and other donor agencies) of effective policies, programs and management processes that promote food security, based on project generated research and analyses. Purpose: To strengthen the capacity of participating countries and USAIDs to analyze food security issues and to formulate policies, institutional reforms, investment plans and management processes that promote food security.

John M. Staatz, Professor Emeritus, Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University focused his career since 1975 on issues of agricultural development in Africa. Professor of Agricultural Economics and African Studies at Michigan State University, he is co-editor of the most widely used textbook on agricultural development (International Agricultural Development, 3rd ed., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press) and served between 1985 and 2008 as co-director of MSU’s Food Security Group, which carried out research, outreach and capacity building throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. He retired as Professor Emeritus from MSU in 2011 although he has continued working with the MSU Food Security Group in implementing food and agricultural development projects in Mali and other areas of West Africa.