Resource information
This paper investigates the potential of
and constraints to a rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan
Africa's large-scale irrigation schemes, using data
from Uganda, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and
Senegal. The authors find that adequate irrigation, chemical
fertilizer, and labor inputs are the key to high
productivity. Chemical fertilizer is expensive in Uganda and
Mozambique and is barely used. This is aggravated when water
access is limited because of the complementarities between
fertilizer and irrigation. Meanwhile, in the schemes located
in four countries in West Africa's Sahel region, where
water access is generally good and institutional support for
chemical fertilizer exists, rice farmers achieve attractive
yields. Some countries' wage rate is high and thus
mechanization could be one solution for this constraint.
Improvement of credit access also facilitates the purchase
of expensive fertilizer or the employment of hired labor.
