Abstract

Women comprise 50 percent of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa, but manage plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less productive. As a source of income inequality and aggregate productivity loss, the country-specific magnitude and drivers of this gender gap are of great interest. Using national data from the Uganda National Panel Survey for 2009/10 and 2010/11, the gap before controlling for endowments was estimated to be 17.5 percent. Panel data methods were combined with an Oaxaca decomposition to investigate the gender differences in resource endowment and return to endowment driving this gap. Although men have greater access to inputs, input use is so low and inverse returns to plot size so strong in Uganda that smaller female-managed plots have a net endowment advantage of 12 percent, revealing a larger unexplained gap of 29.5 percent. Two-fifths of this unexplained gap is attributed to differential returns to the child dependency ratio and one-fifth to differential returns to transport access, implying that greater child care responsibilities and difficulty accessing input and output markets from areas without transport are the largest drivers of the gap. Smaller and less robust drivers include differential uptake of cash crops, and differential uptake and return to improved seeds and pesticides. Document type: Book

Abstract

Africa has great potential for agriculture. Although international commodity prices have been buoyant, Africa’s supply response seems to be weak. A variety of constraints may exist. Using the case of Tanzania, the paper examines the impact of market connectivity, domestic and international, on farmers’ crop choices. It is shown that the international market connectivity, measured by transport costs to the maritime port, is important for farmers to choose export crops, such as cotton and tobacco. Internal connectivity to the domestic market is also found to be important for growing food crops, such as maize and rice. Among other inputs, access to irrigation and improved seed availability are also important factors in the crop choices of farmers. The size of land area is one constraint to promote the crop shift. The paper also reports the finding that farmers are not using market prices effectively in their choice of crop, even after the endogeneity of local prices is taken into account. Document type: Book

Abstract

griculture in Tanzania accounts for 28 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 80 percent of its labor force. The sector is also an important source of export revenues. The data and findings presented in this report provide a summary of the performance of the agriculture sector in Tanzania using a set of indicators covering six areas. These are: 1) access to and availability of certified seed; 2) availability of and access to fertilizer; 3) access to farm machinery, particularly tractor hire services for land preparation; 4) access to agricultural and agro-enterprise finance; 5) the cost and efficiency of transporting agricultural commodities; and 6) measures of policy certainty and uncertainty as perceived by private investors and the effects these have on the enabling environment for producers and agribusinesses. The Agribusiness Indicators (ABI) team conducted interviews with Government agencies, private firms (fertilizer importers, seed companies, tractor importers and distributors, transporters), commercial banks, farmer-based organizations, donors, and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The ABI program is pilot testing an initial set of indicators on the ease (or difficulty) of operating agribusinesses in African countries. The indicators are used to assess whether the countries have an enabling environment that is conducive to agribusiness investment, competitiveness, and ultimately agriculture-led growth.