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NBER African Successes Conference
Zanzibar, 4 August 2011
Policy Discussion: Agriculture and Economic Development
What’s Behind
Africa’s Turnaround?
Continent-wide Trends in
Rural Demography and Farm Technology
Will Masters
Professor and Chair, Department of Food and Nutrition Policy
Tufts University
http://nutrition.tufts.edu
http://sites.tufts.edu/willmasters
Africa’s poverty rates rose only recently,
and turned down over the past decade
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.
Despite weak data and wide variation
many observers see a turnaround
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.
Despite the recent turnaround,
Africa is the last frontier of ultra poverty
(<$0.625/day)
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.
Africa now has 1/8th of the world’s people,
but 2/3rds of the ultra-poor
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.
An underlying cause of Africa’s
impoverishment in the 1970s-1990s
was a sharp fall in land area per farmer
Land available per farm household (hectares)
Reprinted from Robert Eastwood, Michael Lipton and Andrew Newell (2010), “Farm Size”, chapter 65 in Prabhu
Pingali and Robert Evenson, eds., Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Volume 4, Pages 3323-3397. Elsevier.
Falling land per farmer is due to Africa’s fast
(but now slowing) rural population growth
Africa has long had the world’s fastest growing
rural and urban population!
Growth rates by region, 1950-2030
Rural
Urban
Urbanpopulation
population growth (decade averages), 1950-2030
Ruralpopulation
population growth (decade averages), 1950-2030
2.5%
6.0%
2.0%
5.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
-0.5%
-1.0%
-1.5%
4.0%
SS Africa
SS Africa
S Asia
S Asia
3.0%
2.0%
SE Asia
1.0%
SE Asia
Rest of World
Rest of
0.0%
World
Source: Calculated from FAOStat (downloaded 17 March 2009). Population estimates and projections
are based on UN Population Projections (2006 revision) and UN Urbanization Prospects (2001 revision).
Urbanization eventually employs all new
workers so land per farmer can rise
Billions
10
World (total)
2.0
Sub-Saharan Africa
1.8
8
Total
1.6
Total
7
Urban
1.4
Urban
1.2
2010
Rural
Source: Calculated from UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 Revision ,
released April 2010 at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup. Downloaded 7 Nov. 2010.
2050
2040
2030
2020
2010
2000
1990
1970
0.0
2050
0
2040
0.2
2030
1
2020
0.4
2000
2
1990
0.6
1980
3
1970
0.8
1960
4
1950
2010
1.0
1960
Rural
5
1950
6
1980
9
2010
Billions
…in Africa that won’t happen
until the 2050s
Population by principal residence, 1950-2050
Africa’s green revolution has just begun
USDA estimates of average cereal grain yields (mt/ha), 1960-2010
4.5
4.0
Rest-of-World
World
3.5
Southeast Asia
3.0
South Asia
2.5
Sub-Saharan Africa
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Source: Calculated from USDA , PS&D data (www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline), downloaded 7 Nov 2010. Results shown are each
region’s total production per harvested area in barley, corn, millet, mixed grains, oats, rice, rye, sorghum and wheat.
African agriculture is really distinctive
Source: Reprinted from W.A. Masters, “Paying for Prosperity: How and Why to Invest in Agricultural
Research and Development in Africa” (2005), Journal of International Affairs, 58(2): 35-64.
Appropriate new technologies have only
recently been developed and disseminated
Source: Reprinted from W.A. Masters, “Paying for Prosperity: How and Why to Invest in Agricultural
Research and Development in Africa” (2005), Journal of International Affairs, 58(2): 35-64.
Foreign aid for agriculture has just begun to
recover after being sharply cut in 1985-99
Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral
Commitments by Sector, updated 6 April 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids).
The wake-up of aid for agriculture has been
led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Top 15 donors’ foreign aid commitments to African agriculture, 2005-2008
Rank
2005
1
IDA
2
AfDF
3
Denmark
4
United States
5
IFAD
6
Germany
7
Belgium
8
EU Institutions
9
Japan
10
United Kingdom
11
Canada
12
Netherlands
13
France
14
15
2006
300.72 IDA
152.04 AfDF
2007
538.88 United States
226.81 IDA
2008
463.07 IDA
399.16 BMGF
114.98 France
102.30 EU Institutions
141.80 BMGF
114.79 France
391.77 United States
342.42 EU Institutions
80.72 BMGF
66.88 IFAD
99.03 AfDF
87.50 EU Institutions
235.65 Canada
186.30 IFAD
66.43 United States
65.75 Japan
84.78 IFAD
66.12 Japan
122.76 France
73.36 Germany
58.42 Sweden
45.06 Germany
60.58 Korea
54.31 Germany
56.63 Belgium
56.33 Japan
43.48 Belgium
36.19 Norway
53.48 Belgium
50.34 Canada
53.20 Ireland
41.40 Norway
BMGF
32.14 United Kingdom
24.80 Ireland
30.70 Norway
22.56 Denmark
40.64 Italy
31.46 Denmark
Norway
20.80 Netherlands
19.01 Ireland
24.79 Spain
867.01
367.23
323.58
181.73
155.20
129.49
95.13
87.25
77.42
75.13
41.81
35.39
32.36
29.17
19.31
Note: Exact amounts for BMGF have been obscured because methodology differs from that used by the DAC.
Source: P. Pingali, G. Traxler and T. Nguyen (2011), “Changing Trends in the Demand and Supply of Aid for
Agriculture Development and the Quest for Coordination.” Annual Meetings of the AAEA, July 24–26, 2011.
Many African governments are now
focusing more on agriculture
Slide is courtesy of Prabhu Pingali, Greg Traxler and Tuu-Van Nguyen (2011), “Changing Trends in the Demand
and Supply of Aid for Agriculture Development and the Quest for Coordination,” at the AAEA, July 24–26, 2011.
In Africa, US agricultural assistance
had been much less than US food aid
Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral Commitments by Purpose,
updated 12 Jan. 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org). Agriculture includes forestry and fishing.
Conclusions:
Towards sustainable growth
in African agriculture
• African poverty worsened from 1980 through 2000,
but is now improving
– A major underlying cause is land available per farmer, driven
down by rural population growth which is now slowing
– Appropriate new farm technologies are finally arriving, so
crop yields, output and input use are now rising
• The international agricultural R&D needed for crop
improvement had shrunk to near zero, but is now
being restored
– Aid for farm productivity was key to cutting Asian poverty,
then seen as no longer needed in the 1980s and 1990s;
– Africa is now poised for rapid uptake and sustained growth
Additional Slides
Extreme poverty is being eradicated
World Bank estimates of global poverty, 1981-2005
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.
US aid for agriculture has begun to recover,
after 20 years of decline to near zero
Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral
Commitments by Sector, updated 6 April 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids).
The most recent data show continued
poverty reduction across Asia,
but not in all countries
Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/),
updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries,
and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.