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Agriculture remains an important source of livelihood for the majority of Africans, but the sector is still very unproductive. Despite huge agricultural potential, sub-Saharan African countries have not yet benefited from it and experienced the highest prevalence of undernourishment worldwide. As a result, countries import increasingly more agricultural products than they export, putting additional strain on scarce foreign exchange reserves. In this chapter, authors review the main challenges of the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa. It includes gender disparities, dependence on rain-fed agriculture, low use of irrigation, limited public investment and institutional support. All these factors prevent countries from increasing productivity, adapting to climate change shocks and promoting agricultural value chains and trade.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the impact of improved seeds on productivity in Cameroon. The study was conducted based on data collected during a survey on family farms carried out in 2007 by the Agricultural Research Institute for Development (IRAD) under the Project to Strengthen Agricultural Research Partnerships in Cameroon (REPARAC). The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique was used to determine the agricultural productivity gap between the adopters and non-adopters of improved maize seeds. The results obtained show a positive productivity gap of about 0.351 kg/ha between these two groups of producers. In other words, farmers who use the improved maize seeds produce 1.42 times more than those who do not.

This chapter applies treatment effects to measure the agricultural technological gap and to examine the drivers of agricultural technology adoption in Hurungwe, Zimbabwe. The findings reveal a population technological gap of 12.7%, resulting from lack of awareness. Further, they show that exposure to technology causes adoption rates of agricultural technologies to increase by an average of 42.9% from the average of 3.2% of farmers not exposed to technologies. In addition, the results show that amongst the exposed farmers, exposure causes adoption rates to increase by an average of 33%. Bondage to tradition has a negative influence on the farmer’s propensity to adopt agricultural technologies. In this respect, the chapter recommends activities that reduce technology information asymmetry among farmers through increased publicity.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the low performance of labor remains a barrier to the growth of the agricultural sector. Women are an important source of labor; however, they face great setbacks in terms of access to inputs. The influence of input utilization on labor productivity differentials among male- and female-managed plots was assessed using the 2013 General Household Survey (GHS) data for Nigeria. Results revealed that input use was generally low among the farmers. Females in south-east and south-west zones used more of hired labor when compared to males. While labor productivity was higher on plots managed by males, the use of inputs was found to have a significant negative relationship with labor productivity in the highest quantile on plots owned by both gender.

Women play a significant role in agricultural production and household food security. However, there has been low involvement of women in on-farm trials of agricultural technologies. In this study, data were collected through well-structured questionnaires administered to 80 women farmers in an on-farm trial of the drought tolerant (DT) maize variety in Southern Guinea Savannah (SGS) Agro-ecological zone of Nigeria. The study showed that the women farmers are all married, about 23% of them having no formal education and an average age of 43 years. The women farmers ranked the DT maize variety as the best at all the locations. It is therefore recommended that women farmers should be involved in the development and testing of agricultural innovations in order to ensure food security and attain sustainable growth through enhanced agricultural productivity.

The present study examines the adoption of Jatropha Curcas as a bioenergy crop in West Mamprusi and Mion districts of Northern Ghana. A gender analysis is also undertaken. Using data from 400 farmers, the study employs a propensity score matching method to analyze the impact of the adoption of Jatropha Curcas on total crop incomes of farmers. The study concludes that Jatropha adoption significantly reduces the level of crop income per hectare of farmers. The reduction is worse for women-headed households compared to men. Specifically, the Average Treatment effect on the Treated (ATT) estimate is GHC −385.23 per hectare for the whole sample. The study recommends the development of appropriate strategies and a regulatory framework to harness the potential economic opportunities from Jatropha cultivation.

This research emphasizes sustainable production system combinations to meet the agricultural needs of rural populations. Agricultural public investment is not always accessible to producers, and the profitability criterion is chosen as a decision criterion for individual investment of producers. By evaluating the marginal rate of return, choosing the best combination of products obtained ensures both good yields but also to a positive financial result. Thus, the combination of stone barriers, zaï, organic manure, urea and NPK is one that proves most profitable financially, but also for the restoration of degraded environmental assets and the soils are also a source of revenue labor it requires. With the pessimist assumption of climate variability, the results remain positive.

This chapter aims to assess the vulnerability of communities to climate shocks and to analyze the extent to which land tenure affects vulnerability in the Niger basin of Benin. The data used are relative to 14 villages tracked between 1998 and 2012, and 14 additional in 2012. The results reveal that the situation of many villages has improved between 1998 and 2012. Half of the communities tracked lacked adaptive capacity. On average, communities of agro-ecological zone (AEZ) II were the less vulnerable to climate shocks, followed by AEZs I, III, and IV in 2012. The econometric results suggest that farmers’ labor-sharing groups, farmers’ organizations, and access to primary education lessen vulnerability to climate shocks. Tenure security appears to non-significantly strengthen vulnerability to climate shocks.

This chapter assesses via a three-year randomized controlled trial experiment the impact of drought index insurance on the demand for supplemental irrigation (SI) among smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana. It finds a significant increase in the demand for SI among drought-insured farmers compared to noninsured farmers. Although drought index insurance and SI might be seen as two substitutable drought mitigation tools, this result confirms the contrary. It is so because farmers perceive drought index insurance as a tool to hedge the high cost of irrigation in drought years. Therefore, a policy that couples SI with drought index insurance could provide optimal benefit to farmers as this has the potential to reduce basis risk, increase production and reduce food security.

It is generally agreed that African countries have a competitive advantage on agricultural products, and should specialize in this type of production. However, this consideration overlooks the fact that the processing of agricultural products can be a privileged way to improve the value added of exports and stabilize them. Considering Africa’s regions (Central, East, North, South and West Africa), the author provides a classification of countries per potential. Agricultural products can be used to develop manufacturing in Africa, but there are some obstacles, such as education and skills development, exchange rate management, investment and infrastructure development, upgrade of technologies and enhancement of governance quality. Considering the characteristics and the heterogeneity of each region, the chapter discusses some implications and suggests economic policy recommendations.