Abstract:
Increased agricultural productivity is important for development and poverty reduction in Africa.
However, productivity levels in African agriculture is very low and strategies for improving them
have not produced the desired outcome. Successful productivity improvement strategies are
contingent on identifying sources of productivity growth in African agriculture. This paper sought
to examine sources of productivity in African agriculture using cross-country panel data.
Specifically, a stochastic metafrontier model was employed to decompose efficiency into technical
efficiency and technology gap. Generally, the results show an average efficiency of 71%, indicating
about 29% shortfall in efficiency in African agriculture. The source of inefficiency is attributable
to technological inefficiency rather than technical inefficiency because the empirical estimates
show that almost all countries are producing close to the regional frontier. Using the bootstrap
truncated regression model, factors such as expenditure on R & D, trade and literacy were
determined as having efficiency increasing effects
