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Smallholder income and land distribution in Africa: Implications for Poverty Reduction Strategies
By T.S. Jayne, Takashi Yamano, Michael T. Weber, David Tschirley, Rui Benfica, Antony Chapoto, Ballard Zulu, and David Neven*
Contact: webermi@msu.edu
August 2002
Food Security II Cooperative Agreement between U.S. Agency for International Development, Global Bureau, Economic Growth and
Agricultural Development Center, Office of Agriculture and Food Security and Department of Agricultural Economics,
Michigan State University
Posted with full acknowledgement of the Authors
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Background
More than 45% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is now estimated to be in poverty. The swelling poverty in
Africa has increasingly focused governments, international donors, and researchers toward
developing strategies that are “pro-poor.” Strategic plans for poverty reduction have
been prepared since 1998 by at least 15 African governments with support from the
World Bank. However, most of them provide only scant attention to the role of land access
and land distribution in rural poverty.
It is well recognized that severe land inequalities persist in many African countries
between small-scale and large-scale farming sectors. Redressing these inequalities is
likely to be an important element of an effective rural poverty reduction strategy in
countries such as Zimbabwe and Kenya. However, within Africa’s small-scale farming
sectors, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to quantifying land distribution
patterns and considering how they will affect feasible pathways out of poverty.
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