Tropical Agriculture: Is Africa Different?

• Date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12108
• Published date: 01 November 2014

Tropical Agriculture: Is Africa Different?

Lord Andzie-Quainoo and Robin Grier*

Abstract

We investigate the determinants of agricultural productivity in a panel of 27 tropical developing countries

from 1984 to 2005 and test whether the coefficients of the right-hand side variables are significantly differ-

ent in sub-Sahara Africa. We find evidence that the point estimates of fertilizer usage, telephones, tractor

usage, rainfall and irrigation are positively and significantly related to agricultural productivity in the

tropics. We also show that sub-Saharan Africa is different in several respects. For instance, we find no evi-

dence that fertilizer is associated with greater agricultural productivity in the African sample. Also, while

the coefficient on infrastructure is positively associated with agricultural productivity in the full sample, its

quantitative effect is smaller in sub-Saharan Africa. As a robustness test, we experiment with an alternative

measure of tropicality and find that the results are broadly similar.

1. Introduction

Much of the initial optimism about development economics in the early post-World

War II period, and the faith in the discipline’s ability to spur economic growth and

eliminate poverty, has now been replaced with a greater recognition of the complexity

and difficulty involved in such an undertaking. More than 50 years later, the literature

has turned to identifying the obstacles to development. Are there intractable factors

in poor countries that thwart our well-intentioned attempts to spur growth? Geogra-

phy is a possibility, and one that is increasingly studied in the development literature.

Jared Diamond (1997) hypothesized that early technological advances spread easily

from the Fertile Crescent across Europe because they shared a similar climate.1These

same innovations, however, had a much more difficult time spreading across climate

zones, meaning that regions both North and South of the Mediterranean lagged in

technological development. Bloom and Sachs (1998) build on this idea, showing that

tropical countries in Africa have significantly different climatic and soil conditions,

making the adoption of temperate technology difficult. Since almost all of the rich

countries have temperate climates and that is where most of the R&D takes place,

most new technology will also be best suited for those climatic zones. Thus, geogra-

phy and climate may have placed Africa on a path-dependent trajectory of low agri-

cultural productivity.

There is reason for optimism, though, in that there are good arguments (and evi-

dence) that tropical agriculture is not fated to low productivity. First, the Green

Revolution, which represented some of the biggest technological advances in agricul-

ture in the post-World War II period, revolutionized rice production in India in the

1960s. Facing a widespread famine in 1961, Indian policymakers imported a new

variety of rice called IR8 that was significantly more productive than previous crops

when supplemented with irrigation and fertilizer.

* Grier: University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA. Tel: +1-405-325-0581; Fax: +1-325-5842;

E-mail: rgrier@ou.edu. Andzie-Quainoo: Bentley University, Waltham, MA 02452, USA.

Review of Development Economics, 18(4), 640–654, 2014

DOI:10.1111/rode.12108

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd