Investigating the impact of credit channels, energy production and oil revenues on agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Development of the agricultural sector can numerously gift the economy by ensuring food security and rural livelihoods, fostering economic growth, reducing poverty, promoting social stability, and achieving sustainable development goals. But agricultural activities especially in Sub-Saharan Africa are faced with numerous challenges like lack of required credits to the farmers, unavailability of needed energy for powering the farm machinery and transportation of farm produce, and fluctuation of crude oil prices which serve as the main source of energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the sequel to these highlighted challenges that face agricultural activities, this study examines the impact of credit channels, energy production, and oil revenue on agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa using an annual time series covering 21 years (2001-2021) drawn from selected sub-Saharan African countries under study. Using the panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) as the baseline model and the generalized method of moment (GMM) as the robustness check, we made the following findings. From the ARDL perspective, we found that credit channels have a negative impact on agricultural development. In contrast, energy production and oil revenue have positive and negative significant impacts on the agricultural development of sub-Saharan Africa. Further, results of the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) revealed that while credit channels have both negative and positive long-run relationships with agricultural development, energy production, and oil revenues have positive and significant long-run relationships with agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. The study concludes that credit channels have both negative and positive long-run relationships with agricultural development. In contrast, energy production and oil revenue have negative and significant long-run relationships with agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. We recommended effective agricultural credit provision and a mechanized farming system to increase the quality and quantity of food supplies in sub-Saharan Africa.