Total Factor Productivity of ECOWAS Rice, Cotton and Millet

An important policy option of ECOWAS from its establishment has been to make agricultural sector more competitive by furthering production growth and increasing intra regional trade. Hitherto, the region is still characterized by low productivity. This book therefore provides information on total factor productivity growth and its decomposition for rice, cotton and millet producing countries in ECOWAS. The productivity measures were estimated using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment analysis (DEA). The data cover a 45 year period (1961-2005) separated into pre-ECOWAS (1961-1978) and ECOWAS (1979-2005) periods in order to study the effects of ECOWAS reforms on productivity growth of the selected crops. The results for both SFA and DEA show that (1) there are inefficiencies but productivity progress among ECOWAS member nations producing rice, cotton and millet. (2) Technical change has had the greatest impact on productivity, indicating that producers have a tendency to catch-up with the front runners.