Abstract:
Research-enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub-Saharan Africa’s overall economic
growth prospects. Yet, investments in research and development (R&D) targeted to many national food
and agricultural economies throughout Africa are fragile and faltering. To gain insight into what could
be driving this trend, this article updates, summarizes and reassesses the published evidence on the
returns to African agricultural R&D. Based on a compilation of 113 studies published between 1975
and 2014 spanning 25 countries, the reported internal rates of return (IRRs) to food and agricultural
research conducted in or of direct consequence for sub-Saharan Africa averaged 42.3%py. In addition
to the 376 IRR estimates, the corresponding 129 benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) averaged 30.1. Most (96.5%)
of the returns-to-research evaluations are of publicly performed R&D, and the majority (87.6%) of the
studies were published in the period 1990–2009. The large dispersion in the reported IRRs and BCRs
makes it difficult to discern meaningful patterns in the evidence. Moreover, the distribution of IRRs is
heavily (positively) skewed, such that the median value (35.0%py) is well below the mean, like it is for
research done elsewhere in the world (mean 62.4%py; median 38.0%py). Around 78.5% of the evaluations
relate to the commodity-specific consequences of agricultural research, while 5.5% report on the returns
to an ‘‘all agriculture” aggregate. The weight of commodity-specific evaluation evidence is not especially
congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout Africa, nor, to the best that can be
determined, the commodity orientation of public African agricultural R&D.
