Publication: Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Rural Sudan
Loading...
Published
2020-06
ISSN
Date
2021-08-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section two describes the state of the rural population in Sudan, by first discussing the spatial distribution of poverty across the states as well as changes in poverty levels between 2009 and 2014-15. It also describes the profile of poor rural households using characteristics such as their incomes, consumption, and assets. Section three focuses on the practice of agriculture in Sudan. It documents the agriculture-specific characteristics of households, such as choice of crops, use of inputs, irrigation, plot size, and credit access. We use these characteristics to illustrate the profile of rural farmers in Sudan and identify differences between poor and non-poor farmers. Section four describes agricultural yields across Sudan and relates these measures of farm productivity to the previously described farm characteristics to identify constraints to agricultural productivity. Section five concludes with a summary of the main findings and policy recommendations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ali, Haseeb; Etang Ndip, Alvin; Touray, Sering; Fuje, Habtamu. 2020. Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Rural Sudan. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36105 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Rural Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)While agriculture remains the mainstay for a large share of the population in Sudan, and rural poverty has seen a dramatic decrease (between 2009 and 2014/15), poverty remains relatively high among those engaged in agriculture. Households engaged in agriculture—either crop farming or raising livestock—see among the highest rates of poverty among households classified by their main livelihoods in Sudan. As these households form a major bulk of the total population, understanding why these households remain poor and identifying strategies for lifting them out of poverty is a key concern for researchers and policy makers. This concern occupies the primary motivation for this study. Using data from the 2009 National Baseline Household Survey (NBHS) and 2014/15 National Household Budget and Poverty Survey (NHBPS), this study sheds light on the rural landscape in Sudan. Though rural Sudan has fared much better than urban Sudan between survey rounds, the number of poor remains higher in rural than in urban areas. Sudan severely lags other African countries in terms of agricultural productivity. Sorghum, Sudan’s most commonly produced crop—grown by close to half the agrarian households—has seen yields increase from below 500 kg per ha in 1995 to almost 700 kg per ha in 2017. A major constraint to improving crop productivity in Sudan is the low use of productivity-enhancing inputs, particularly fertilizers and pesticides and low-yield seed varieties. Increasing input use can be achieved by investing in rural markets. Market participation of agrarian households in Sudan is low, constraining farmers’ ability to raise their income levels and escape poverty. Improving rural transportation and telecommunications networks, providing access to rural credit and financial services, and increasing the ease of doing business for input providers and output marketers can increase the geographic penetration of agrarian input and output markets. Though sorghum and millet remain the dominant crops grown in Sudan, the recent increase in the number of households growing sesame is a welcome development. Deteriorations in the irrigation infrastructure need to be reversed to ensure Sudan remains competitive in the export of commercial crops. Access to cell phones has significantly increased channels of communication for the rural poor.Publication Shocks and Household Welfare in Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-10)The Sudanese economy has faced several shocks over the years, sometimes resulting in devastating impacts on the economy and the welfare of Sudanese households. The sources of these shocks vary, ranging from weather-related shocks such as droughts and floods to the global financial crisis and commodity price hikes. In the absence of effective social protection programs, exposure of households to frequent shocks lowers their ability to escape poverty, pushing households slightly above the poverty line back into poverty and sliding poor households deeper into poverty. This paper applies this framework to examine the impact of shocks on the welfare of Sudanese households and explore coping strategies typically utilized by households to mitigate the negative effects of shocks. The paper uses the 2009 National Baseline Household Survey (NBHS) and the 2014-15 National Household Budget and Poverty Survey (NHBPS) to document the main types of shocks that Sudanese households are exposed to and describe the profile of Sudanese households likely to be vulnerable and/or resilient to shocks. To complement this analysis, the paper uses the most recent round of the data collected in 2014/15 (containing information on idiosyncratic shocks) together with data on covariate shocks such as rainfall and conflict obtained from other sources to estimate the impact of shocks on household welfare. Since the impact of shocks on household welfare is likely to be multidimensional, various indicators of household welfare such as consumption, poverty status, assets, dietary quality, and diversity are considered in the paper. Results from the analysis are used to highlight the state of social protection in Sudan and discuss the need for an expansion of the existing system.Publication Reversing the Trend of Stunting in Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02)The report is structured as follows: section two provides an overview of the existing literature on undernutrition and its determinants. Section three describes the methodology used in this report, the UNICEF conceptual framework and the MICS data collected in 2010 and 2014. The analysis section (section four) begins by describing the nature of stunting among 0-5-year-old children in Sudan highlighting differences in stunting rates across states, households, gender, and age groups. This analysis is followed by an overview of the extent of inequalities in access to adequate levels of nutrition drivers among 0–23-month-old children. The second part of section four examines the extent to which access to adequate levels of nutrition drivers influences stunting in Sudan. The authors estimate marginal effects of access levels (including individual and joint access) on the probability of being stunted to identify the main nutrition drivers that significantly affect stunting and the heterogeneity of their effects across space, wealth, and gender. Finally, section five concludes by discussing the implications of the results on multisectoral responses to stunting in Sudan.Publication Reversing the Trend of Stunting in Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)Stunting, measured using a height-for-age Z score [HAZ] and an indicator of chronic malnutrition, among 0–5-year-old Sudanese children has been on the rise—from 34 percent in 2010 to 38 percent in 2014. Although a multisectoral approach to tackling undernutrition may mask clarity and undermine specificity of sectors to prioritize, it can be a basis for designing evidenced-based and balanced multisectoral strategies to addressing stunting in Sudan. Overall, stunting is more prevalent in the early years of Sudanese children and among children from the poorest households and in rural areas where adequate access to the underlying drivers of nutrition also remains significantly low. Adequate access to nutrition drivers is strongly associated with a lower likelihood of being stunted. Among the nutrition drivers considered, adequate access to food security and care and health care (both individually and jointly) significantly lowers a child’s probability of being stunted. In rural areas and poor households where stunting rates are highest, prioritizing food security and access to adequate health care can contribute toward lowering stunting. Poverty remains a central feature of stunting in Sudan and a main source of inequalities in adequate access to nutrition driversPublication Growth and Productivity in Agriculture and Agribusiness : Evaluative Lessons from World Bank Group Experience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011)The World Bank Group has a unique opportunity to match the increases in financing for agriculture with a sharper focus on improving agricultural growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greater effort will be needed to connect sectoral interventions and achieve synergies from public and private sector interventions; to build capacity and knowledge exchange; to take stock of experience in rain-fed agriculture; to ensure attention to financial sustainability and to cross-cutting issues of gender, environmental, and social impacts and climate; and to better integrate the World Bank Group support at the global and regional levels with that at the country level. This evaluation uses the typology of economies developed by the Agriculture for Development: World Development Report 2008 as one classification in its analysis. In the agriculture-based category, which includes most of Sub-Saharan Africa, development of the agriculture sector is essential to growth and poverty reduction, yet productivity is low, constrained by limited access to modern inputs, irrigation, communication, and transport. The World Bank Group support focused on alleviating these constraints is important to help achieve poverty reduction.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital innovation in SMEs(Taylor and Francis, 2021-03-09)This paper presents a systematic literature review on digital innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It aims to synthesize previous research and identify knowledge gaps and future research opportunities. A systematic review of the literature was carried out by analyzing 382 articles published between 1979 and 2019. From synthesizing the extant literature, we developed a theoretical framework advocating that digital innovation in SMEs is driven by a configuration of antecedents, goes through different stages of innovation process, and leads to organizational and business process performance outcomes. Using an in-depth content analysis, we discuss the examined digital technologies, theories underpinning digital innovation in SMEs research, contextual orientations, and the content of research in this field. This review identifies significant knowledge gaps in relation to theory, context, method and content.Publication Improving the Well-Being of Adolescent Girls in Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11)This paper conducts a large, narrative literature review of interventions that seek to (1) increase educational attainment, (2) delay childbearing, and/or (3) delay marriage for adolescent girls in developing countries. Using 104 interventions from 70 studies, predominantly in developing countries, the paper summarizes the performance of 16 categories of interventions in improving each of the three outcomes of interest. It then provides high-level policy strategies to improve each outcome, informed by this review. Finally, the paper discusses several promising future research avenues to help close knowledge gaps and, thus, improve policy guidance for enhancing the well-being of adolescent girls in developing settings.Publication Health-System Reform and Universal Health Coverage in Latin America(Elsevier, 2015)Starting in the late 1980s, many Latin American countries began social sector reforms to alleviate poverty, reduce socioeconomic inequalities, improve health outcomes, and provide financial risk protection. In particular, starting in the 1990s, reforms aimed at strengthening health systems to reduce inequalities in health access and outcomes focused on expansion of universal health coverage, especially for poor citizens. In Latin America, health-system reforms have produced a distinct approach to universal health coverage, underpinned by the principles of equity, solidarity, and collective action to overcome social inequalities. In most of the countries studied, government financing enabled the introduction of supply-side interventions to expand insurance coverage for uninsured citizens—with defined and enlarged benefits packages—and to scale up delivery of health services. Countries such as Brazil and Cuba introduced tax-financed universal health systems. These changes were combined with demand-side interventions aimed at alleviating poverty (targeting many social determinants of health) and improving access of the most disadvantaged populations. Hence, the distinguishing features of health-system strengthening for universal health coverage and lessons from the Latin American experience are relevant for countries advancing universal health coverage.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Tracking Universal Health Coverage(World Health Organization and World Bank, 2021-12-13)Health is a fundamental human right, and universal health coverage (UHC) is critical for achieving that right. UHC represents the aspiration that good quality health services should be received by everyone, when and where needed, without incurring financial hardship. This ambition was clearly stated as a target in the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and reaffirmed when world leaders endorsed the Political Declaration of the United Nations High-level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage in September 2019, the most comprehensive international health agreement in history. Beyond health and wellbeing, UHC also contributes to social inclusion, gender equality, poverty eradication, economic growth and human dignity. This report reveals that pre-pandemic, gains in service coverage were substantial and driven by a massive scaling up of interventions to tackle communicable diseases, such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. And while impoverishing health spending has decreased in recent years, the number of people impoverished or further impoverished by out of pocket health spending has remained unacceptably high. These trends are exacerbated by substantial and persistent inequalities between and within countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has subsequently led to significant disruptions in the delivery of essential health services. Rising poverty and shrinking incomes resulting from the global economic recession are likely to increase financial barriers to accessing care and financial hardship owing to out of pocket health spending for those seeking care, particularly among disadvantaged populations. The pre-COVID challenges, combined with additional difficulties arising from the pandemic, brings an even greater urgency to the quest for UHC. Strengthening health systems based on strong primary health care (PHC) is crucial to building back better and accelerating progress towards UHC and health security. Effective implementation of PHC-oriented health systems enables greater equity and resilience, with greater potential to deliver high-quality, safe, comprehensive, integrated, accessible, available and affordable health care to everyone, everywhere, but most especially the most vulnerable. Substantial financial investments in PHC-oriented building blocks of health systems, particularly in the areas of greatest expenditure (health and care workforces, health infrastructure, medicines and other health products) should be supported, carefully planned and informed by health system performance data to address critical gaps, particularly in low-income and lower-middle income countries. There is also an urgent need to remove remaining barriers in order to enable access to health care for all. Key barriers to UHC progress include poor infrastructure, with limited availability of basic amenities, weaknesses in the design of coverage policies to limit the harmful effects of out of pocket payments particularly for the poor and those with chronic health service needs, shortages and inefficient distribution of qualified health workers, prohibitively expensive good quality medicines and medical products, and lack of access to digital health and innovative technologies. Maintaining progress towards UHC is likely to be challenging. UHC is first and foremost a political choice. It is also a moral imperative to guarantee the right to health for all. More than ever before, strong political commitment from world leaders and partners organizations is the essential ingredient for overcoming barriers.