Agriculture plays a dominant role in the economies of sub-Saharan African countries though productivity has historically lagged behind other regions. In the past two decades, agriculture has been re-prioritized in policy and governments are increasingly mobilizing funding from diverse sources to finance agricultural development projects.
Through the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) adopted in 2003, African countries have re-prioritized agriculture as a key lever for development. This priority was reinforced with the Malabo Declaration in 2014, when African leaders pledged to boost investment and productivity in agriculture through increased mobilization of public and private funding.
Over the last year and a half, EPAR has constructed over 150 indicators related to agricultural development, and shared our decisions on data cleaning and indicator construction. We do this work and share our outputs both to facilitate analyses of these rich datasets and to make estimates of relevant indicators available to a broader audience of potential users. There are numerous decision points in the process of constructing indicators that affect the final estimates.