Resource information
Is Africa's rural economy
transforming as its economies grow? This paper uses
comparable income aggregates from 41 national household
surveys from 22 countries to explore the extent of income
diversification among rural households in Sub-Saharan
Africa, and to look at how income diversification in
Sub-Saharan Africa compares with other regions, taking into
account differences in levels of development. The paper also
seeks to understand how geography drives income
diversification, focusing on the role of agricultural
potential and distance to urban areas. The countries in the
African sample have higher shares of on-farm income (63
versus 33 percent) and lower shares on nonagricultural wage
income (8 and 21 percent) compared with countries of other
regions. Specialization in on-farm activities continues to
be the norm in rural Africa (52 percent of households, 21
percent in other regions). In terms of welfare,
specialization in nonagricultural income-generating
activities stochastically dominates farm-based strategies in
all of the countries in our African sample. Crop income is
still important for welfare, however, and even at higher
levels of household income, crop activities continue to play
an important complementary role. Regardless of distance and
integration in the urban context, when agro-climatic
conditions are favorable, farming remains the occupation of
choice for most households in the African countries for
which the study has geographically explicit information.
When urban integration is low and agricultural conditions
more difficult, the picture is mixed, with households more
likely to engage more fully in nonfarm activities in Niger
and Malawi, but less likely to do so in Uganda and Tanzania.
