The debate about the role of agriculture in poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa calls for an empirical assessment of three sets of questions. First, how can agricultural performance be improved and to what extent does investing in agriculture enhance or harm overall economic growth? Second, is participation by the poor in agricultural growth on average higher than their participation in nonagricultural growth, and if so, what conditions determine their participation rate? Third, if promotion of agriculture tends to increase participation by the poor in growth but leads to slower overall economic growth than the promotion of other sectors, which strategy would tend to have the largest payoff in terms of poverty reduction and under which circumstances?
This volume seeks to find answers to these questions. It draws on national accounts growth data and data on poverty from household surveys to establish empirical regularities in relationships that hold across countries. To shed light on variations among and within countries due to differences in endowments and institutional arrangements, it examines farm household consumption and production data from studies in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, and Tanzania. These country studies were selected on the basis of availability of integrated data sets, the desire to include countries at different stages of development, and policy makers' interest in having their country participate in this research.
Bibliography: Christiaensen, Luc and Lionel Demery. 2007. Down to Earth: Agriculture and Poverty Reduction in Africa. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
