Research Topics

EPAR TECHNICAL REPORT #411
Publication Date: 09/09/2022
Type: Research Brief
Abstract

Climate change is predicted to have increasingly dire effects on the largely rainfed agriculture of sub-Saharan agriculture, a livelihood that also contributes to climate change. Within this context, multilateral funding institutions are increasingly funding projects devoted to the adaptation to or mitigation of climate change. Data from the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) provide an overview of climate-related project data, but the intersection of climate-related projects and projects intended to develop rural and agricultural economies is less explored. This paper focuses on climate-related projects in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of rural and agricultural project funding. We use a custom dataset from three separate multilaterals (the World Bank, African Development Bank, and International Fund for Agricultural Development) to answer the following research questions:

  1. What proportion of agriculture-related lending across the three multilaterals of interest has a climate component?
  2. Which countries are borrowing most for climate-related agricultural projects? Is the amount of borrowing correlated with a country’s climate risk?

 

Of all financing projects in our dataset (N = 1,846), we identified 203 as being climate-related (11%) and 505 as being related to rural agricultural economies (27%). Of the $26.5 billion annualized project funding, rural and agricultural financing accounts for $6.5 billion (24.6%) while climate projects receive $1.97 billion (7.4%). The World Bank funds approximately half of all agriculture projects in the dataset, with the AfDB funding just under 30% and IFAD just over 20%.

Annual average borrowing amounts from multilaterals for climate-related rural/agricultural economies projects varies widely across sub-Saharan Africa. The major borrowers include Ethiopia ($150 million), Nigeria ($105 million), and Kenya ($102 million). The proportion of multilateral borrowing for climate-related projects among all rural agricultural borrowing also varies substantially across sub-Saharan Africa; the Seychelles and Eswatini devote the largest proportions of rural agricultural borrowing toward climate work (100% and 69.8%, respectively). Fourteen SSA countries devote between 15% and 30% of rural agricultural borrowing to climate-related projects and fifteen have not received any multilateral financing for climate-related rural/agricultural economies projects.

We do not find a statistically significant relationship between a country’s Climate Risk Index and the proportion of annual rural/agricultural economies borrowing focused on climate.

 

Suggested Citation:

Financing for Climate Change in Africa: A View of Sovereign Borrowing in Agriculture from Multilateral Funding Institutions . EPAR Technical Report #411 (2022). Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington. Retrieved <Day Month Year> from https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research

EPAR TECHNICAL REPORT #411
Publication Date: 05/24/2021
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

In this dataset, we compile current project data from three major international financial institutions (or IFIs) - the World Bank, African Development Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development - to understand

  1. how much countries are borrowing from each institution. and
  2. how much of that funding is devoted to small scale producer agriculture.

We begin by gathering publicly accessible data through downloads and webscraping Python and R scripts. These data are then imported into the statistical software program, Stata, for cleaning and export to Excel for analysis. This dataset contains rich information about current projects (active, in implementation, or recently approved), such as project title, project description, borrowing ministry, commitment amount, and sector. We then code relevant projects into two categories: On Farm (projects pertaining directly to small scale producer agriculture) and Rural/Agricultural Economies (inclusive of On Farm, but broader to include projects that impact community livelihoods and wellbeing). Finally, we annualize and aggregate these coded projects by IFI and then by country for analysis. Bilateral funding, government expenditures on agriculture, and development indicators are also included as supporting data to add context to a country's progress towards agricultural transformation.

The primary utility of this dataset is having all projects collected in a single spreadsheet where it is possible to search by key terms (e.g. commodity, market, financial, value chain) for lending by IFI and country, and to get some level of project detail.  We have categorized projects by lending category (e.g. irrigation, livestock, agricultural development, research/extention/training) to aggregate across IFI so that the total funding for any country is easier to find. For example, Ethiopia and Nigeria receive the most total lending from these IFIs (though not on a per capita basis), with each country receiving more than $3 billion per year on average. Ethiopia receives the most lending devoted to On Farm projects, roughly $585 million per year.  Overall, these data provide a snapshot of the magnitude and direction of these IFI's lending over the past several years to sub-Saharan Africa. 

 

Suggested Citation: 

Figone, K., Porton, A., Kiel, S., Hariri, B., Kaminsky, M., Alia, D., Anderson, C.L., and Trindade, F. (2021). Summary of Three International Financial Institution (IFI) Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. EPAR Technical Report #411. Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington. Retrieved <Day Month Year> from https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/tracking-investment-landscape-summary-three-international-financial-institutions-ifis

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EPAR Technical Report #349
Publication Date: 11/30/2017
Type: Literature Review
Abstract

Donor countries and multilateral organizations may pursue multiple goals with foreign aid, including supporting low-income country development for strategic/security purposes (national security, regional political stability) and for short-and long-term economic interests (market development and access, local and regional market stability). While the literature on the effectiveness of aid in supporting progress on different indicators of country development is inconclusive, donors are interested in evidence that aid funding is not permanent but rather contributes to a process by which recipient countries develop to a point that they are economically self-sufficient. In this report, we review the literature on measures of country self-sufficiency and descriptive evidence from illustrative case studies to explore conditions associated with transitions toward self-sufficiency in certain contexts.

  

EPAR Technical Report #330
Publication Date: 11/22/2017
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

A large and growing body of scholarship now suggests that many household outcomes, including children’s education and nutrition, are associated with a wife’s bargaining power and control over household decision-making. In turn, bargaining power in a household is theorized to be driven by a wife’s financial and human capital assets – in particular the degree to which these assets contribute to household productivity and/or to the wife’s exit options. This paper draws on the detailed Farmer First dataset in Tanzania and Mali to examine husband and wife reports of a wife’s share of decision-making authority in polygynous households, where multiple wives jointly contribute to household productivity, and where exit options for any single wife may be less credible. We find that both husbands and wives assign less authority to the wife in polygynous households relative to monogamous households. We also find that a wife’s assets are not as strongly associated with decision-making authority in polygynous versus monogamous contexts.  Finally, we find that responses to questions on spousal authority vary significantly by spouse in both polygynous and monogamous households, suggesting interventions based on the response of a single spouse may incorrectly inform policies and programs.

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EPAR Technical Report #326
Publication Date: 06/01/2017
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

By examining how farmers respond to changes in crop yield, we provide evidence on how farmers are likely to respond to a yield-enhancing intervention that targets a single staple crop such as maize. Two alternate hypotheses we examine are: as yields increase, do farmers maintain output levels but change the output mix to switch into other crops or activities, or do they hold cultivated area constant to increase their total production quantity and therefore their own consumption or marketing of the crop? This exploratory data analysis using three waves of panel data from Tanzania is part of a long-term project examining the pathways between staple crop yield (a proxy for agricultural productivity) and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

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EPAR Technical Report #347
Publication Date: 03/17/2017
Type: Literature Review
Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that empowering women may lead to economic benefits (The World Bank, 2011; Duflo, 2012; Kabeer & Natali, 2013). Little work, however, focuses specifically on the potential impacts of women’s empowerment in agricultural settings. Through a comprehensive review of literature this report considers how prioritizing women’s empowerment in agriculture might lead to economic benefits. With an intentionally narrow focus on economic empowerment, we draw on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)’s indicators of women’s empowerment in agriculture to consider the potential economic rewards to increasing women’s control over agricultural productive resources (including their own time and labor), over agricultural production decisions, and over agricultural income. While we recognize that there may be quantifiable benefits of improving women’s empowerment in and of itself, we focus on potential longer-term economic benefits of improvements in these empowerment measures.

EPAR Technical Report #340
Publication Date: 12/12/2016
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

Previous research has shown that men and women, on average, have different risk attitudes and may therefore see different value propositions in response to new opportunities. We use data from smallholder farm households in Mali to test whether risk perceptions differ by gender and across domains. We model this potential association across six risks (work injury, extreme weather, community relationships, debt, lack of buyers, and conflict) while controlling for demographic and attitudinal characteristics. Factor analysis highlights extreme weather and conflict as eliciting the most distinct patterns of participant response. Regression analysis for Mali as a whole reveals an association between gender and risk perception, with women expressing more concern except in the extreme weather domain; however, the association with gender is largely absent when models control for geographic region. We also find lower risk perception associated with an individualistic and/or fatalistic worldview, a risk-tolerant outlook, and optimism about the future, while education, better health, a social orientation, self-efficacy, and access to information are generally associated with more frequent worry— with some inconsistency. Income, wealth, and time poverty exhibit complex associations with perception of risk. Understanding whether and how men’s and women’s risk preferences differ, and identifying other dominant predictors such as geographic region and worldview, could help development organizations to shape risk mitigation interventions to increase the likelihood of adoption, and to avoid inadvertently making certain subpopulations worse off by increasing the potential for negative outcomes.

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EPAR Technical Report #180
Publication Date: 10/27/2016
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

We use OLS and logistic regression to investigate variation in husband and wife perspectives on the division of authority over agriculture-related decisions within households in rural Tanzania. Using original data from husbands and wives (interviewed separately) in 1,851 Tanzanian households, the analysis examines differences in the wife’s authority over 13 household and farming decisions. The study finds that the level of decision-making authority allocated to wives by their husbands, and the authority allocated by wives to themselves, both vary significantly across households. In addition to commonly considered assets such as women’s age and education, in rural agricultural households women’s health and labour activities also appear to matter for perceptions of authority. We also find husbands and wives interviewed separately frequently disagree with each other over who holds authority over key farming, family, and livelihood decisions. Further, the results of OLS and logistic regression suggest that even after controlling for various individual, household, and regional characteristics, husband and wife claims to decision-making authority continue to vary systematically by decision – suggesting decision characteristics themselves also matter. The absence of spousal agreement over the allocation of authority (i.e., a lack of “intrahousehold accord”) over different farm and household decisions is problematic for interventions seeking to use survey data to develop and inform strategies for reducing gender inequalities or empowering women in rural agricultural households. Findings provide policy and program insights into when studies interviewing only a single spouse or considering only a single decision may inaccurately characterize intra-household decision-making dynamics. 

EPAR Research Brief #332
Publication Date: 02/26/2016
Type: Literature Review
Abstract

Household survey data are a key source of information for policy-makers at all levels. In developing countries, household data are commonly used to target interventions and evaluate progress towards development goals. The World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) are a particularly rich source of nationally-representative panel data for six Sub-Saharan African countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. To help understand how these data are used, EPAR reviewed the existing literature referencing the LSMS-ISA and identified 415 publications, working papers, reports, and presentations with primary research based on LSMS-ISA data. We find that use of the LSMS-ISA has been increasing each year since the first survey waves were made available in 2009, with several universities, multilateral organizations, government offices, and research groups across the globe using the data to answer questions on agricultural productivity, farm management, poverty and welfare, nutrition, and several other topics.

EPAR Presentation #280
Publication Date: 08/12/2014
Type: Data Analysis
Abstract

This poster presentation summarizes research on changes in crop planting decisions on the extensive and intensive margin in Tanzania, with regards to changes in agricultural land that a farmer has available and area planted in the context of smallholders and farming systems. We use household survey data from the Tanzania National Panel Survey (TNPS), part of the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS – ISA) to test how much the agricultural land available to households changes, how much farmers change the proportion of land decidated to growing priority crops, and how crop area changes vary with changes in landholding. We find that almost half of households had a change of agricultural land area of at least half a hectare from 2008-2010. Smallholder farmers on average decreased the amount of available land between 2008 and 2010, while non-smallholder farmers increased agricultural land area during that time period, but that smallholder households planted a greater proportion of their agricultural land than nonsmallholders. Eighty percent of households changed crop proportions from 2008 to 2010, yet aggregate level indicators mask household level changes.