This paper describes agricultural policy choices and tests some predictions of political economy theories. It begins with three broad stylized facts: governments tend to tax agriculture in poorer countries, and subsidize it in richer ones, tax both imports and exports more than nontradables and...

Data from the Groningen Growth and Development Center's Africa Sector Database and the Demographic and Health Surveys reveals that much of Africa's recent growth and poverty reduction has been associated with a substantive decline in the share of the labor force engaged in agriculture. This...

This chapter begins with a brief summary of economic growth and structural changes in the region since the 1950s and of agricultural and other economic policy developments as they affected the farm sector at the time of and in various stages after independence from colonial powers. The chapter...