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While greater growth in agriculture and the broader rural sector is crucial for ameliorating Africa's high levels of poverty and malnutrition, developing strategies to achieve these objectives is hindered by a number of factors, including the broad array of interventions needed, the lack of accurate data, and dearth of trained local policy analysts. As such, this paper proposes a Strategic Analysis Knowledge Support System (SAKSS) in which data, tools, and knowledge are compiled, analyzed, and disseminated for the purposes of identifying a set of priority investment and policy options to promote agricultural growth and rural development. These analyses can in turn help inform the broader process of designing, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating a country's rural development strategy. In order to be an influential and sustainable part of this process and become a genuine "knowledge system," SAKSS will need to be established with an awareness of each country's development priorities and unique political, social, and economic context. By institutionalizing SAKSS through a network structure that includes government ministries, research institutions, universities, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations, and donors, SAKSS can become not only more relevant and legitimate for its intended end-users but also help strengthen local analytical capacity to inform the policy debate on future development strategies and outcomes.

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I have been going through the document for the last two days. I found some editorial correction in Box 12: An Illustrative Short Cut Approach...(i.e. the coefficient of ROADS) should have the opposite algebraic sign, -0.8, than the indicated 0.8. Therefore, the equation should read as: POV=-0.8ROADS-1.1RDE-1.5MKT as opposed to POV=0.8ROADS-1.1RDE-1.5MKT (where each of the variables represent the %change as indicated). With such a correction, the whole content of the Box become consistence to each other.

Also, its citation to Peter Hazell should be provided in the reference section of the document, where there are two citation that contain Peter Hazell. There is no citation that contain Peter Hasell alone as described in the box.

Having looked at Box 12 again, we found that you are indeed correct: a negative sign should have been added in front of the 0.8 coefficient such that the equation reads POV = -0.8ROADS-1.1RDE-1.5MKT.

With regards to the references, the reason that the source for this Box says Peter Hazell is that Peter actually came up with the example when reviewing the paper. As such, it was not an example taken from a work he has already published, which is why there are no accompanying references. Again, since Peter is already listed as a contributor to this paper, it was unnecessary to list his name as the source of this example.

We appreciate your comments and thank you for drawing our attention to mistakes we had overlooked.