Alejandro Nin-Pratt

Improved Performance of Agriculture in Africa South of the Sahara: Taking Off or Bouncing Back

The improved performance of the agricultural sector in Africa south of the Sahara during the most recent decade (2000–2010) has raised questions about the drivers behind the growth. Skeptics argue that rising commodity prices, as world markets experience a commodity boom, are the main cause of the agricultural growth. Others point to improvements in the policy environment and increased investments in agriculture at a time when African governments and donors have been rallying to increase their support to agriculture. Is African agriculture undergoing a new and sustained recovery after many decades of stagnant and volatile growth rates—or is it simply riding the current global commodity boom? We attempt to answer this question by analyzing the structure of overall agricultural growth in the past 30 years using a growth decomposition approach. Results show both good and bad news for future prospects of African agricultural growth. The good news is that a changing policy environment and increased attention to agriculture has had a major effect on overall productivity growth based on technical efficiency gains. The bad news is that most of this productivity growth is the result of countries recovering from the poor performance of the 1980s and 1990s together with favorable domestic prices. A key challenge for African countries in the years to come is to transform the current windfall gains from favorable high commodity prices and the one-time effects of policy reforms into sustainable growth based on technical change.

Inputs, Productivity and Agricultural Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study employs a growth accounting approach to revisit past performance of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and to analyze the relationship between the input mix used by SSA countries and productivity levels observed in the region. Findings show that improved technical efficiency has been the main driver of growth in recent years benefiting poorer, low labor productivity countries. Countries with higher output and input per worker have benefited much more from technological progress than poorer countries, suggesting that technical change has done little to reduce the gap in labor productivity between countries. Results also show that the levels of input per worker used in SSA agriculture at present are extremely low and associated with less productive technologies, and that technical change has shifted the world technological frontier unevenly, increasing the distance between SSA countries and those countries with the “right” input mix.