This paper uses panel data on 46 African countries from 2001 to 2014 to estimate the impacts of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), an agriculture-led integrated framework of development priorities in Africa, on agricultural expenditure and productivity, income, and nutrition. A difference-in-difference treatment-effects model (based on when a CAADP compact is signed and the level of CAADP implementation reached) and different estimation methods and model specifications are used. The results show that CAADP has had a positive impact on agricultural value-added and land and labor productivity. The impact on agriculture expenditure is generally negative, suggesting that there is a substitution effect between the government’s own funding and external sources of funding for the sector. The estimated impact on income and nutrition is generally insignificant. There are some puzzling results from the interaction between specific period of compact signing and level of implementation reached. Implications for maintaining the positive impacts, as well as for further research to understand the puzzling results, are discussed.

Changes in the global environment have led some to question whether the conventional wisdom on the role of agriculture in economic development is still relevant to Africa today. This report critically examines the literature on this issue, taking both the conventional and skeptical views into account. It complements this review with case studies of five African countries. The findings indicate that agricultural growth will play an essential role in promoting overall economic growth and reducing poverty in most of Africa's agrarian-based economies. This holds true even for countries that have the potential for industrial growth driven by natural resources. The results also show that only smallholder food-staple and livestock production can generate broadbased agricultural growth. By demonstrating that Africa's agricultural and food subsector cannot be bypassed, this report contributes to an important ongoing debate in development studies.

This paper assesses the nature of agricultural transformation taking place in different parts of Africa and analyzes policy drivers of the transformation using data from the CAADP Biennial Review (BR) on 46 indicators from 2014 to 2018. First, a typology of agriculture transformation in different groups of countries is developed by analyzing the initial values and trends in three indicators—share of agriculture in total employment, share of agriculture in gross domestic product, and agriculture labor productivity. The typology, in addition to a conceptual framework that is developed for measuring the relative effect of a policy on an outcome, provides the basis for analyzing the policy drivers of agriculture transformation. The 46 BR indicators are classified into policies (13 indicators), intermediate results (23 indicators), and outcomes (10 indicators), and then econometric methods are used to measure the association between the policy indicators and the intermediate results and outcomes, which include agriculture intensification (e.g., access to finance and extension, fertilizer use, and irrigation development), agriculture growth, agriculture trade, food security, nutrition, and poverty. Different fixed-effects regression methods and model specifications of the explanatory variables are used to assess sensitivity of the results to different assumptions of the data and the relationship between the policies and intermediate and outcome indicators. The trends in the indicators are different. For example, access to finance and extension have risen over time; fertilizer use, irrigation development, agriculture growth, and adult undernourishment have fallen over time; and child nutrition and poverty have remained stagnant over time. Different policy indicators are significantly associated with different indicators of agriculture intensification, agriculture growth, and outcomes. Also, there are differences in the results across the agriculture transformation groups. Major policy drivers of agriculture transformation in the different groups are identified. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The main purpose of this study is to assess the contribution of agricultural investment to the achievement of Côte d'Ivoire's development objectives. More specifically, it aims to analyze the extent to which the implementation of the National Agricultural Investment Programme can contribute to the achievement of the objectives and targets of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union's Agenda 2063. The methodological used combines a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and a microsimulation model to assess the impact of agricultural investment options on different outcomes related to the different agendas above. The simulation results indicate that the implementation of the NAIP would enable Côte d'Ivoire to make significant progress and achieve some of the CAADP, SDGs and the African union’s 2063 Agenda’s targets. Thus, the country could achieve investment targets by slightly exceeding the 10% share of public expenditure in total government expenditure and a significant increase in private investment in agriculture. This progress in terms of investment could result in an acceleration of agricultural growth so that Côte d'Ivoire's agricultural GDP would increase at a growth rate above the target of 6% per year. It would also make it possible to achieve several SDGs by 2030, as well as certain targets of the African Union's Agenda 2063. However, despite progress in terms of productivity in some segments of the agricultural value chain, the fight against poverty will remain a major challenge that the country will not be able to meet.

This paper uses the Biennial Review (BR) data and simple correlations to analyze the potential relationship between progress in recommitting to CAADP or mutual accountability and progress in meeting commitments in the other five broad areas. Various weighting systems are used to demonstrate the sensitivity of the weights chosen for computing the scores to develop the Africa Agricultural Transformation Scorecard (AATS). The current BR applies equal weights to the seven thematic areas, followed by equal weights to performance categories and indicators within each thematic area and performance category, respectively. The other weighting systems considered for the sensitivity analysis include equal weights applied at performance category or indicator level, differential weights based on the ease or difficulty in achieving various commitments using the Items Response Theory (IRT), and differential weighting system that gives more weight to performance categories or indicators that are more directly linked to agricultural transformation.