Agricultural export, growth and the poor in Africa : a meta analysis

Over the past decade, a growing number of studies have examined the role of agricultural export in economic growth in Africa. The literature, however, provides conflicting results about the agricultural export-led growth hypothesis. In this study, we aim to examine the impact of agricultural export on economic growth by performing a meta-analysis. Our meta-analysis finds significant presence of negative publication bias in the literature. Using mixed-effect multilevel meta-regression, we find that after correction for publication bias, the average agricultural export elasticity to economic growth is 0.763 for the poor in Africa. Interestingly, agricultural export is growth for the rich in Africa, although the elasticity of GDP is 0.043. These results are consistent with the agricultural export-led growth hypothesis. The implication is that export promotion should be targeted at agricultural output in low-income and lower middle-income countries whereas upper middle-income countries in Africa may focus on non-agricultural export.