CollinsAnyona/african-agriculture-productivity

Growth-accounting analysis of six decades of African agricultural output: is growth coming from more inputs or better farming? Python pipeline, USDA ERS data, clustering + 2035 forecast. # More Land or Better Farming? Six Decades of African Agricultural Growth An end-to-end data analysis of what drives agricultural output growth in Sub-Saharan Africa — expansion of inputs (land, labor, fertilizer, capital) versus improvements in efficiency (total factor productivity) — using USDA Economic Research Service data covering 200+ countries from 1961 to 2019. **Why it matters:** Sub-Saharan Africa's population is projected to nearly double by 2050. Whether the continent feeds itself depends less on *how much* agricultural output grows than on *how* it grows. Growth that comes from clearing more land and adding more labor eventually hits hard limits; growth that comes from productivity is sustainable. This project measures which one Africa has been getting. ## Headline findings **1. Africa's agricultural output growth is fast — faster than the world average.** Sub-Saharan output grew ~3.3%/yr over 2011–2019 versus ~2.0% for the world. On raw output, SSA is one of the fastest-growing regions since 1961. **2. But almost none of it comes from productivity.** Decomposing output growth into input growth + TFP growth (an exact identity in this data) shows that in 2011–2019, TFP contributed just **0.01 percentage points** of SSA's 3.3% annual growth — effectively zero. The world, by contrast, now gets the *majority* of its agricultural growth from TFP (1.3 of 2.0 points). Africa is growing by farming *more*, not farming *better* — the opposite of the path Asia took during and after its Green Revolution. | Period | SSA output | SSA from inputs | SSA from TFP | World from TFP | |---------|-----------:|----------------:|-------------:|---------------:| | 1990s | 2.5%/yr | 1.9 | 0.6 | 1.7 | | 2000s | 3.7%/yr | 3.0 | 0.7 | 1.8 | | 2011–19 | 3.3%/yr | 3.3 | **0.0** | 1.3 | **3. The land-productivity gap with other regions is wide and widening in absolute …