If you look at the total value, Peter Coy notes that sub-Saharan Africa looks very impressive with a gross profit that exceeds that of the rest of the world.
But almost all of this came from using multiple inputs, mostly land. If you look at the output per unit of input, ie total factor productivity (TFP) it means that sub-Saharan Africa is not just following the rest of the world, it is lagging behind.
Things get worse when you look at agricultural production by country. Alice Evans points us to a “very important graph” from the work of Suri et al. (2024) which shockingly shows that since ~2010 agricultural production has declined in many African countries. I found this graph hard to believe.
The numbers are correct based on data from the USDA but digging deeper, I noticed that the two countries that are doing the worst are Djibouti and Botswana – two small countries where agriculture is less than 5% of GDP and where the climate and land means that agriculture is hopeless. of always to be a great success. In addition, Djibouti is growing rapidly and Botswana is a middle-income country with a developing economy. I suspect that what is happening here is that the growth of the economy attracts the best people (unmeasured) and resources in agriculture, which leads to the fact that the sector that was already a small sector is no longer productive in terms of paper, even though the economy has not lost much.
Conversely, the countries where Ag TFP is growing the most are Zimbabwe and Senegal where agriculture is the largest share of GDP and employment (Zimbabwe ~ 11-14% of GDP, 70% of employment and Senegal 16% of GDP, 30% of employment). So the good news is that agricultural productivity is increasing in areas where it matters.
The bottom line is that agricultural production in Africa is low. I see the main cause as small firms which means less opportunities for economies of scale, mechanization and R&D (see Suri et al. (2024) for a longer discussion.). Climate change is dangerous and the development of climate-resistant crops, especially in Africa where heat stress will be very important, has high benefits.
Overall, however, my conclusion is that although agricultural productivity in Africa is low and there are threats on the horizon the situation is getting slightly better rather than worse.
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