Agricultural Imports, Agriculture Productivity and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Esther N. Mwangi (), Fuzhong Chen and Daniel M. Njoroge
Additional contact information
Esther N. Mwangi: University of International Business and Economics
Fuzhong Chen: University of International Business and Economics
Daniel M. Njoroge: Dedan Kimathi University of Technology

Journal of African Trade, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 15-28

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the causal links among agricultural imports, agriculture productivity, and economic growth in 40 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1990–2015. Granger causality tests are applied to infer direction of causality, and the generalized two-stage least squares instrumental variable technique is employed to estimate the effects while controlling for endogeneity. The bootstrapping procedure is used to deal with cross-sectional dependence. The results reveal bidirectional causality between agricultural imports and agriculture productivity in the full sample, and in middle- and low-income non-oil-exporting countries. The relationship between agricultural imported inputs and agriculture productivity is positive and significant. In addition, unidirectional causality from agricultural imports to economic growth is observed in the full sample and middle-income non-oil exporters. The growth elasticity of agricultural imports is about 1.0 in the full sample and 1.3 in the middle-income group. These results then cast new light on the importance of agricultural imports for growth and development in the African region.

Keywords: Agricultural import; agriculture productivity; economic growth; Granger causality; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.2991/jat.k.200902.001 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jouafr:v:7:y:2020:i:1:d:10.2991_jat.k.200902.001

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.atlantis-press.com/journals/jat

DOI: 10.2991/jat.k.200902.001

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Trade is currently edited by Svetlana Zakharchenko

More articles in Journal of African Trade from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().