Todd Benson

The Determinants of Poverty in Malawi, 1998

Abstract Poverty reduction efforts aim at changing those household characteristics that are judged important determinants of household welfare and poverty status. We model the determinants of poverty for Malawian households by conducting an empirical multivariate analysis of household welfare primarily using data from the 1997–98 Malawi Integrated Household Survey. Using this model to simulate the effects of changes in key household characteristics, we are able to assess the likely impact on poverty of a number of poverty reduction policy interventions. The simulations show that higher levels of educational attainment, especially for women, and the reallocation of household labor away from agriculture and into the trade and services sector of the economy will prove effective in reducing poverty in Malawi.

The economywide effects of teff, wheat, and maize production increases in Ethiopia: Results of economywide modeling

The government of Ethiopia is investing significant public resources to increase overall national production of teff, wheat, and maize. To better understand the likely economywide effects of increases of between 12 and 14 percent in the national production of these cereals, a set of production increase scenarios for each crop were run using a computable general equilibrium model of the Ethiopian economy. The analyses were extended to also consider the effects of several international wheat price and wheat import scenarios, a wheat subsidy program, and maize exports. Among the effects considered are changes in economic growth, prices, total household consumption, cereal and calorie consumption levels, and poverty measures.

Cross-Sectoral Coordination Failure: How Significant a Constraint in National Efforts to Tackle Malnutrition in Africa?

Background Malnutrition arises from multifaceted causes and requires action from multiple sectors to address. Consequently, oversight and direction are said to be required to ensure that public goods and services needed to reduce malnutrition are delivered by the sectors responsible in a coordinated fashion. To do so, many countries have established cross-sectoral national nutrition coordination agencies. Objective The performance of such agencies established recently in three African countries is evaluated to determine how critical their intersectoral coordination function is to national public efforts to reduce malnutrition. Methods This evaluation uses qualitative information on the national institutional frameworks within which nutrition activities are carried out in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda, countries with such agencies, and in Ghana, which has none. Results None of the agencies has so far effectively carried out the three functions on which they were evaluated: cross-sectoral coordination, advocacy to sustain political commitment to address malnutrition, and resource mobilization. No cross-sectoral national nutrition initiatives are being implemented. Nutrition does not feature strategically in the master development frameworks in any country. No additional government resources have been mobilized, although international resources have been. Conclusions The agencies have proven of limited value to the malnourished in these countries. However, cross-sectoral barriers are not the primary reason for this ineffectiveness. Rather, inability to maintain continued political commitment for efforts to address malnutrition—in short, advocacy—is the principal deficiency in performance. Cross-sectoral coordination only becomes important if malnutrition itself is treated as a politically important problem, thereby stimulating action in various sectors.

An Atlas of the Ethiopian Rural Economy: expanding the range of available information for development planning

This article describes a recently released Atlas of the Ethiopian Rural Economy that synthesizes spatial information on agriculture and other aspects of the rural environment in Ethiopia from a number of secondary sources. A primary goal of the project was to increase the relevance and accessibility of this information for policy-makers and development program planners through its compilation and harmonization within a cartographic format. Understanding the many dimensions of a nations rural economy is critical to policy-makers and program planners as they develop strategies to transform the rural economy in order to sustainably reduce rural poverty and accelerate broad economic growth. In many countries, there is a wealth of valuable and spatially explicit information that could enlarge and deepen such an understanding. However, this is often difficult to use because it is fragmented, found in many different formats, presented at different levels of aggregation, and held by agencies with different access policies and procedures. Several aspects of a statistical atlas of this nature recommend it as a model for initiating transformations in poor-access and fragmented information environments that characterize many developing countries. This article describes these characteristics, as well as the challenges that face those implementing such projects, and seeks to relate information projects of this nature to the broader importance of information access for guiding rural development policy and strategy formulation.

Association between irrigated farming and improved nutrition in farm households in Malawi

ABSTRACT More intensive use of Malawis water and agricultural land resources through increased irrigation is expected to enable Malawians gain greater access to more food and a more diverse range of foods. The nutritional status of the nutritionally vulnerable in Malawian communities should improve in consequence. However, there is little evidence from Malawi or elsewhere to confirm whether irrigation improves nutritional status at household level. Using data from the Third Malawi Integrated Household Survey of 2010/11, this article presents a basic assessment of whether increased use of irrigated farming by smallholders in Malawi might result in better nutritional outcomes for children in Malawian farm households and more diverse diets in these households. The association between the use of irrigation by farm households and the growth performance of their children aged six months to five years was positive but weak and not significant (P>0.05). The positive association between irrigated farming and the diversity in the foods consumed by farm households was somewhat stronger and significant (P<0.05). In particular, irrigation is shown to be an important component in reducing seasonality in household dietary diversity.

Macro-economic Models: How to Spend Uganda’s Expected Oil Revenues? A CGE Analysis of the Agricultural and Poverty Impacts of Spending Options

With the recent discovery of crude oil reserves along the Albertine Rift, Uganda is set to establish itself as an oil producer in the coming decade. Total oil reserves are believed to be two billion barrels, with recoverable reserves estimated at 0.8–1.2 billion barrels. This is comparable to the level of oil reserves in African countries such as Chad (0.9 billion barrels), Republic of the Congo (1.9 billion barrels), and Equatorial Guinea (1.7 billion barrels) but far short of Angola (13.5 billion) and Nigeria (36.2 billion) (World Bank 2010). Using a conservative reserve scenario of 800 million barrels, peak production, likely to be reached by 2017, is estimated by the World Bank to range from 120,000 to 140,000 barrels per day, with a production period spanning 30 years. A more optimistic scenario in this study is based on 1.2 billion barrels and sets peak production at 210,000 barrels per day (see Wiebelt et al. 2011). Although final stipulations of the revenue sharing agreements with oil producers are not yet known, government revenue from oil will be substantial. One estimate, based on an average oil price of US

Study of the Determinants of Chronic Malnutrition in Northern Nigeria: Quantitative Evidence from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Working Paper 45 (September 2017):

75 per barrel, puts revenues at approximately 10–15% of GDP at peak production (World Bank 2010). The discovery of crude oil therefore has the potential to provide significant stimulus to the Ugandan economy and to enable it to better address its development objectives, provided oil revenues are managed in an appropriate manner.

Fertilizer subsidies in Africa: Are vouchers the answer?

Background: Close to half of all children younger than 5 years in the Northeast and Northwest geopolitical zones were estimated to be stunted in their growth for their age in 2013 compared to 22% of children in the rest of Nigeria. Objectives: We examine the drivers of chronic child undernutrition in northern Nigeria and how those drivers differ from other areas of the country. Methods: Both a standard child-level regression-based approach and decomposition analysis were used to address the determinants of stunting and decompose how drivers differ between northern Nigeria and other areas of the country using 2008 and 2013 Nigeria DHS data. Results: There are strong differences in the levels of the determinants of undernutrition in young children between the 2 parts of the country. However, equally important, the decomposition analysis shows that there are significant differences between northern Nigeria and other areas of Nigeria in the effect of the same determinant of nutritional status in accelerating or retarding the linear growth of young children. Conclusions: A national program to address child undernutrition must recognize this heterogeneity in its design. To impose across Nigeria, a single set of approaches to address the factors which results in stunted children is likely to fail for large numbers of children if these strong geographical differences in how these determinants operate to affect child nutritional status are not considered. Solutions need to be developed within northern Nigeria to more closely reflect the way the determinants of nutritional status operate in this area of the country.