Rural Financing, Infrastructural Investment and Agricultural Productivity: any hope for Poverty Reduction in Africa?
Keywords:
Poverty, Hunger, Agricultural Productivity, GLS, Infrastructural Investment.Abstract
Poverty is the root cause of hunger which in turn causes malnutrition, low productivity and low income, leading to a phenomenon called ‘vicious circle of poverty and hunger’, which is a common feature associated with African countries. A breakaway out of this circle is to improve agricultural productivity of the continent via infrastructural investment. The preoccupation of this paper, therefore, is to provide a link between rural financing, infrastructural investment, agricultural productivity and income inequality in some selected African countries. The Generalized least square (GLS) estimation technique is adopted to analyse the panel data drawn from secondary sources. The analysis reveals that electricity per capita and health expenditure which are proxy for infrastructural investment have significant impact on agricultural output. The policy implication that emanates from this study highlights the need for the various African States to improve on its electricity generation so as to meet the increasing demand of the growing population and also increase the percentage of health expenditure to GDP in order to improve the health sector.
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