Improving the Lives of Farmers Living in Rural Areas in the Sub-Saharan Region

Most food in sub-Saharan Africa is produced on small farms. Using large datasets from household surveys conducted across many countries, we find that the majority of farms are less than 1 ha, much smaller than previous estimates. Farms are larger in farming systems in drier climates. Through a detailed analysis of food self-sufficiency, food and nutrition security, and income among households from divergent farming systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, we reveal marked contrasts in food security and household incomes. In the south of Mali, where cotton is an important cash crop, almost all households are food secure, and almost half earn a living income. The purpose of the study is to examine improving the lives of farmers living in rural areas in the Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper contributes to the understanding of the long-run and short-run drivers of income inequality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and its sub-regions based on the evidence from bootstrap co-integration and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The findings reveal a long-run relationship exists for almost the entire SSA and its sub-regions for the dependent variable, independent variables and the overall models. The exception was West Africa where the dependent variable was not statistically significant but the independent variables and overall model were co-integrated. The results further show that for SSA, in the long run, economic growth decreases the uneven distribution of income whereas in the short run economic growth increases inequality. A reduction in corruption in the short run and long run makes inequality fall. Population growth in the long run and short run aggravates the distribution of income. A rise in the rate of unemployment in the short run and long run has a positive relationship with income inequality. Trade globalization in the long run heightens inequality but is not significant in the short run.