Land and labor dynamics in the future of African transformation

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The dynamics of land and labor in Sub-Saharan African agriculture are rapidly changing. A rising share of medium-sized farms owned by urban investors is fundamentally affecting land distribution, leading to increased land consolidation and crowding out of smallholder farmers. Increasing off-farm employment opportunities are driving both rural workers out of agriculture and rural wages up. Both trends are driven by agri-food system transformation, as urbanization and a growing middle class are leading to increasing demand for more diverse and processed food. At the same time, land productivity and crop yields are still extremely low compared to other developing regions. So far, the influence of the mutual interdependencies between rising farm sizes and off-farm labor opportunities on agricultural productivity in Africa have not been simultaneously studied. Accordingly, the social relevant question under which conditions a large-scale agriculture and non-farm economy driven transformation can be a successful development path for African countries or whether current land and labor dynamics rather result in a stagnating economy through crowding out of smallholders and increases in poverty remains unanswered. The research project "Land and labor dynamics in the future of African transformation (LANDYN)" aims at answering the question by simultaneously investigating how increasing farm sizes and off-farm labor opportunities in African countries affect i) agricultural productivity on the microeconomic level and ii) the income distribution and multipliers on the macroeconomic level. LANDYN will empirically investigate agricultural productivity at the microeconomic level in Ghana, Tanzania, and Malawi and integrate these insights into a computable general equilibrium model to assess the future of African transformation pathways while accounting for macroeconomic feedbacks.