Growth and Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: The main purpose of this essay was to find whether there was a significant correlation between RCA in agricultural products and growth in GDP per capita, in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. I used a modified version of the Solow model to estimate the presumptive relationship, and to see whether there is any convergence in growth between the countries. Due to lack of reported numbers I did not get as much data as I hoped for, which probably is one explanation to why I didn’t get that many significant results. But according to my estimated values, the coefficient for RCA(4) (Animal and Vegetable Oils) was significantly larger than 0 for the period 2000-2005, and there was β-convergence in the period 2005-2010 with respect to GDP per capita. With more time and space, this essay and its results could have been extended (e.g. looking at more years and/or sectors to get more observations). I could also have included more variables, e.g. agricultural exports as a share of GDP.