Agricultural Sector Development and Structural Transformation: Sub-Saharan Africa versus East Asia

Abstract

This paper has revisited the roles of agricultural sector development for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in responding to the twofold challenges – broadening the base of economic growth and sustaining growth momentum. Based on a holistic and long-term perspective on the mechanism of an economic take-off and a realistic characterization of the initial conditions of SSA economies including their crucial dependence on ‘communal ownership of land,’ this paper proposes a two-transition approach to a traditional agriculture-based economy’s take-off, where agricultural development in the current generation precedes and prepares for industrial development in the next generation.

The results from the empirical analyses using regional and country data have confirmed the following hypotheses derived from the framework: First, that it is agricultural development that generates positive external effects on industrial development, and not vice versa. Second, that a primitive economy evolves to higher stages through agricultural and industrial developments in a sequence with the demographic dividend and savings accumulated in the phase of agricultural development being indispensable for the economy’s transition to industrial development.

Keywords: structural develpment, agricultural sector develpment, demographic dividend, stage of economic development

JEL Classification: O1, O4