Investing in African agriculture to halve poverty by 2015

<p style="">This discussion paper studies the agricultural spending in thirty sub-Saharan African countries that is required to achieve agricultural growth needed to meet the MDG 1 of halving poverty by 2015. Using both growth-poverty and growth-expenditure elasticities, this study estimates the required agricultural growth rates and corresponding public expenditures both at the regional and at individual country levels.<br /><br />The key findings of this study, which explicitly focus on examining the required spending in agriculture in order to achieve the MDG1 are as follows:<br /> using growth elasticities and projected growth rates, even under the more optimistic scenario, many African countries will not reach the MDG1 by 2015 at the regional level at the country level, only a handful of countries will succeed, while the majority will fall short, indicating that the African countries need to accelerate their economic growth, particularly in the agricultural sector at the regional level, Africa requires annual agricultural growth rate of 7.5 percent per annum at the country level, there is a large variation among some countries requiring at least 10 percent growth in agriculture, while some countries will achieve the goal if they continue at their present growth rates. Only Nigeria stands out with a high level of poverty that has the required agricultural growth rate close to 6 percent on the whole, the African countries will need to boost their agricultural spending to USD 33 to 39 billion per annum. This requires that the region will need to increase its agricultural spending by 20 percent per year under the more optimistic scenario, or 24 percent under the more conservative scenario at the country level, this requirement ranges from achievable levels (e.g. 9.5 %) to far more difficult levels (e.g. 33 %).In summary, this study has reviewed the past progress of poverty reduction in Africa and found that Africa as a region has achieved relatively little progress in poverty reduction, and in fact poverty has actually increased over the years. The authors stress that African countries must accelerate their economic growth if they are to reach the MDG 1 with a complementary strengthening and reformation of governance and institutions.<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span>