Ghana is one of a few African countries where agricultural mechanization has recently undergone rapid development. Except for places in the forest zone where stumps are still an issue in fields, tractors used for plowing and maize shelling have been widely adopted even among small farmers....

At roughly 4% per annum, labor productivity in Tanzania has grown more rapidly over the past 14 years than at any other time in recent history. Employment growth has also been strong keeping up with population growth at roughly 2.2 percent per annum. However, the bulk of the employment growth...

In recent years, some counties in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) have experienced growth in their economies and improvements in living standards. Although there is some debate, it is clear that the share of the population living below the poverty line fell significantly over the past decade...

A renewed focus on agriculture's potential contribution to economic transformation in Africa has resulted in increased attention paid to agricultural mechanization. African agriculture still relies predominantly on human muscle power despite anecdotal evidence on urbanization and rising rural...

Much policy and research attention has focused on the relationship between agriculture and nutrition. We extend this analysis to the context of Nepal's decade-long civil conflict. Understanding how conflict or similar stress mitigates the agriculture-nutrition linkage is essential to developing...

This paper assesses whether tractor investment is a rational and profitable decision for farmers using firm investment theory and tractor owner survey data collected in 2013. Under erratic rainfalls, timeliness of farming operations is critical for farmers. Based on the hypothesis that owning a...

Africa's recent economic growth is at a historical high, the patterns associated with this growth appear to be quite different from the Asian experiences where rapid growth was fueled by labor intensive, export-oriented manufacturing. Because this pattern differs with our typical view of...

Agriculture in African South of the Sahara (SSA) can be transformed if the right public support is provided at the initial stage, and it can sustain itself once the enabling environment is put in place. Successes are also specific to the location of projects. In Ghana, interesting insights are...

Gender differences in the engagement of work activities across sectors are important elements of gender inequality in rural livelihoods and welfare in developing countries. The role of production technologies, including agricultural mechanization, in addressing gender inequality, is increasingly...