Jonathan Kydd Andrew Dorward Jamie Morrison Georg Cadisch
Abstract
There is widespread concern at continuing and deepening poverty and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and the lack of broad-based economic growth. There is also debate about agriculture's role in driving pro-poor economic growth, some arguing it has a critical role while others see it is as largely irrelevant. We suggest that both sets of arguments pay insufficient attention to important institutional issues, and that agriculture has a critical role to play, largely by default, as there are few other candidates with the same potential for supporting broad-based pro-poor growth. There are, however, immense challenges to agricultural growth. In considering the costs and benefits of investment in agricultural growth, however, regard must also be given to the economic and social costs of rural stagnation and to providing safety nets in situations of enduring poverty. Policy needs to focus more on agriculture, and recognize and address the diversity of institutional, trade, technological and governance challenges to poverty-reducing growth in Africa.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)