POLICY AND POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS ON AGRICULTURAL-DEVELOPMENT AND FOOD-PRODUCTION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Since the beginning of the 1970s, Sub-Saharan Africa has been plagued by chronic food shortage and famine. Domestic production has fallen below subsistence level primarily because of very poor agricultural yields. The problem is largely due to the neglect of agricultural development for an extended period of time by African governments. The findings in this paper indicate that policy and political factors are among some of the factors which are associated with this problem. There are significant associations between these factors and the dependent variables of per capita food production and a quality of life index. The independent variables explain a considerable amount of the variance in these dependent variables.