Agricultural growth linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa

After reviewing the literature on agricultural growth linkages in Africa, this report examines the mix of farm and non-farm goods and services that rural Africans purchase, and the implications of these expenditures for rural economic growth in five African countries: Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In the West African countries, in addition to farm and non-farm sectors, individual commodities are sorted into tradable and non-tradable categories, and by geographic zones of interest: local, national, and multi-country regional. The same process is followed in Southern Africa for Zambia, but no assumptions are made on regional tradability because of lack of data. Fully comparable data were not available for Zimbabwe, but some similarities in rural consumption patterns could be detected.