africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
in South Asia, and 92 percent in East Asia. These are all positive results, but they
are much less than the 162 percent growth in North America over the same period.
Figure 26.4: Agricultural Value Added Comparisons: North America and
Developing Regions, 1981-2009
Note: Data presented are three-year moving averages.
Source: Author’s calculation based on World Bank, 2014.
It is a notable puzzle that the three developing regions in the figure have all followed
a similar global divergence trend on this productivity measure, even while average
Asian income levels have been converging towards the global frontier. Presuming
the trend is not an artifact of some measurement error, at first glance it might appear
to suggest that the cross-regional differences in income growth are entirely due to
other sectors like manufacturing, as suggested by the evidence in Rodrik (2013).
However, in light of the tremendous regional differences in yield growth discussed
below, the trend might also be due to wage and price factors, linked either to slow
migration of rural labor or to physical productivity-induced pressures that have been
keeping the prices of Asian agricultural products low (see, for example, de Janvry
and Sadoulet, 2010; Thorbecke, 2013).
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