Agriculture for Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

By J. Staatz, Niama Nango Dembélé. 2007

200 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper argues that an agriculture-led strategy of economic growth offers most countries of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) their best chance at rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation. Given the huge heterogeneity of SSA, no single Asian-style green revolution is likely to drive that growth. Rather, SSA will need to develop a series of differentiated agricultural revolutions suited to its varied ecological niches and market opportunities. SSA faces unique organizational challenges in fostering this growth, due to more weathered soils; much weaker infrastructure than other areas of the world; highly heterogeneous social and linguistic systems; poor governance in some countries; and a large number of small countries, which makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale in some of the prime movers of agricultural development, such as agricultural research, higher education, and market development and regulation. In sub-Saharan Africa growth needs to be accelerated, secured and used more effectively to promote broadly shared development. This requires two elements. The first is a reversal in the massive underinvestment and significant mis-investment that has taken place in the past in African agriculture, which has led to a huge cost in forgone development for Africans. There is an opportunity now for increased productive investment and improved efficiency of investment in African agriculture, which can significantly increase productivity and output, especially among certain groups of smallholders. The second element is to capture part of this productivity growth to help finance a set of investments, programs and policies that in the short to medium term will secure the assets and access to services of those smallholders facing severe resource and productivity constraints, while over the longer term provide them or their children with a path out of low-productivity farming.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/713e7cc678662b565ca20b7bb80a29a28397ba72

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Citations in the corpus

Effect of Agricultural Extension Program on Smallholders' Farm Productivity: Evidence from Three Peasant Associations in the Highlands of Ethiopia (2013, unknown): “Increasing agricultural productivity is a major challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where 62% of the population (excluding South Africa) depends on agriculture for their livelihoods (Staatz & Dembele, 2007).”
Rural Poverty (2009, background): “…not to have invested in agricultural productivity in the period leading up to its rapid industrialization (Amsden 1989).5 Growth linkages from agriculture in currently developing countries, including Africa, are commonly suggested to be considerable (for a review, see Staatz and Dembele 2007).”
Agriculture and Development: A Brief Review of the Literature (2011, unknown): “As a consequence, several geographically separate revolutions will have to take place across Sub-Saharan Africa (Staatz and Dembele, 2007).”
Agricultural Productivity and Poverty Reduction: Linkages and Pathways (2011, unknown): “…of non-cereal staples such as cassava, increased productivity of cotton in francophone Africa, increased successful participation in high value crops (such as horticulture in East Africa and specialty coffee in Rwanda), and increased efficiency in marketing staples (Staatz and Dembélé 2008).”