Awakening Africa's Sleeping Giant' explores the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture. Based on a careful examination of the factors that contributed to the successes achieved in Brazil and Thailand, as well as comparative analysis of evidence obtained through detailed case studies of three African countries--Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia--the authors argue that opportunities abound for farmers in Africa to.
Although labor is usually the unique asset upon which poor people can make a living, little is known about the functioning of labor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this volume is to contribute to the building of knowledge in this area. In this book, the authors use a unique set of identical and simultaneous labor force surveys conducted in seven capitals of Western Africa, as well as in some other African countries (Cameroon, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 2000s. They present innovative and original results on how people are faring in these labour markets, using up-to-date econometric and statistical methods. Because so little is known about labor markets in the region, each chapter starts with detailed descriptive statistics that aim to shed light onto specific aspects of African urban labor markets. Comparisons between the ten cities are systematically carried out. Descriptive sections are followed by in-depth analyses on various issues. The book is divided into four parts that examine 13 topics. Part I presents the main stylised facts, which are investigated further in a more analytical way throughout the volume. Part II focuses on job quality and labor market conditions, such as unemployment and underemployment, vulnerability, and job satisfaction. Part III explores the many dimensions of labor market inequalities through various lenses, such as returns on education, segmentation, life-cycle inequality (with a particular focus on old age), inter-generational mobility, time related inequality, and gender and ethnic earnings discrimination. Part IV addresses some key coping mechanisms and private responses, with a focus on migration and child labor. The book concludes with recommendations for future research.
If not addressed in time, climate change is expected to exacerbate Nigeria’s current vulnerability to weather swings and limit its ability to achieve and sustain the objectives of Vision 20:2020 [as defined in http://www.npc.gov.ng /home/doc.aspx?mCatID=68253]. The likely impacts include: • A long-term reduction in crop yields of 20–30 percent • Declining productivity of livestock, with adverse consequences on livelihoods • Increase in food imports (up to 40 percent for rice long term) • Worsening prospects for food security, particularly in the north and the southwest • A long-term decline in GDP of up to 4.5 percent The impacts may be worse if the economy diversifies away from agriculture more slowly than Vision 20:2020 anticipates, or if there is too little irrigation to counter the effects of rising temperatures on rain-fed yields. Equally important, investment decisions made on the basis of historical climate may be wrong: projects ignoring climate change might be either under- or over-designed, with losses (in terms of excess capital costs or foregone revenues) of 20–40 percent of initial capital in the case of irrigation or hydropower. Fortunately, there is a range of technological and management options that make sense, both to better handle current climate variability and to build resilience against a harsher climate: • By 2020 sustainable land management practices applied to 1 million hectares can offset most of the expected shorter-term yield decline; gradual extension of these practices to 50 percent of cropland, possibly combined with extra irrigation, can also counter-balance longer-term climate change impacts. • Climate-smart planning and design of irrigation and hydropower can more than halve the risks and related costs of making the wrong investment decision. The Federal Government could consider 10 short-term priority responses to build resilience to both current climate variability and future change through actions to improve climate governance across sectors, research and extension in agriculture, hydro-meteorological systems; integration of climate factors into the design of irrigation and hydropower projects, and mainstreaming climate concerns into priority programs, such as the Agriculture Transformation Agenda.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has adopted Vision 20: 2020--an ambitious strategy to make Nigeria the world's 20th largest economy by 2020. In the absence of policies to accompany economic growth in key carbon-emitting sectors with a reduced carbon footprint, emission of greenhouse gases could more than double in the next two decades. To evaluate how to achieve the objectives of Vision 20: 2020 with reduced carbon emissions, the Federal Government of Nigeria and the World Bank undertook a multiyear program of analytical work. The summary results of this program are contained in a separate book (published in the World Bank's "Directions in Development" series) entitled Low-Carbon Development: Opportunities for Nigeria, which concludes that Nigeria can achieve its development objectives, while stabilizing emissions at 2010 levels and providing domestic benefi ts on the order of 2 percent of GDP. This volume is a collection of the background technical reports on the four sectors of inquiry: agriculture and land use, oil and gas, power, and transport. It contains details on the data, methodology, and assumptions used throughout the analysis. For agriculture and land use, the study team developed an agriculture production growth model, which permits the evaluation of sector emissions in both a reference and a low-carbon scenario. The study fi nds that low-carbon practices have signifi cant potential to make the sector more productive and more climate-resilient. For the oil and gas sector, the analysis assesses the potential of accelerated phase-put of gas fl aring, reduction of leakages, and increased energy effi ciency in the operation of facilities, to both reduce the sector's emission and contribute to the industry's net revenues and growth. The analysis of the power sector shows how the country can expand power generation and broaden access to electricity while reducing associated emissions, through renewable energy, energy effi ciency, and lower-carbon technologies in thermal power generation. Finally, this analysis assesses the expected growth in CO2 emissions from on-road transport under a normal business development scenario up to the year 2035, and it identifi es actions at national and local levels that would reduce this growth, resulting in fuel economies, better air quality, and reduced congestion. Assessing Low-Carbon Development in Nigeria: An Analysis of Four Sectors outlines several actions that the Nigerian government could undertake to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
This book documents frontier knowledge on the drivers of agriculture productivity to derive pragmatic policy advice for governments and development partners on reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The analysis describes global trends and long-term sources of total factor productivity growth, along with broad trends in partial factor productivity for land and labor, revisiting the question of scale economies in farming. Technology is central to growth in agricultural productivity, yet across many parts of the developing world, readily available technology is never taken up. We investigate demand-side constraints of the technology equation to analyze factors that might influence producers, particularly poor producers, to adopt modern technology. Agriculture and food systems are rapidly transforming, characterized by shifting food preferences, the rise and growing sophistication of value chains, the increasing globalization of agriculture, and the expanding role of the public and private sectors in bringing about efficient and more rapid productivity growth. In light of this transformation, the analysis focuses on the supply side of the technology equation, exploring how the enabling environment and regulations related to trade and intellectual property rights stimulate Research and Development to raise productivity. The book also discusses emerging developments in modern value chains that contribute to rising productivity. This book is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.
