The impact of agriculture on economic development in Zambia

Joseph Phiri

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

Zambia is amongst developing countries experiencing increased poverty, lower productivity, and over reliability on unprocessed raw materials like copper, which are most impacted by global markets volatility, and all these have a had an immense impact on the country’s level of economic prosperity. To mitigate the effect of the above, the Zambian government, through several development plans and policies have tried promoting economic diversification, with agriculture as one of the most viable options, thanks to its ability to create employment, ensure food security, and contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), through value addition and increased output as promoted by this dissertation assignment. The main objective of this paper is to look at the role of agriculture and its impact on GDP, by looking at factors impacting economic output through agriculture, its performance on the local and global markets, and most importantly make policy recommendations on how it can serve as a catalyst for sustained economic development, and a pillar for upgrading the standards of living in the country. This dissertation will analyse timeseries data from 1970 to 2019, which target variables being agriculture and GDP, using the ARDL Bounds test, and predicting the impact of agriculture on the GDP through the Wald test as a supplementary method. This dissertation is motivated by the over 63 percent of Zambians live below the poverty line, with nation’s annual per capita GDP of just below 1700 USD With Africa’s agenda 2063, the United nations (UN) vision 2030, and the countries Eighth National Development Plan in place, this dissertation will contribute policy direction on how agriculture can help create employment, deescalate the effects on poverty, increase productivity, and contribute to national output a better export performance and increase GDP.

Keywords

Agriculture, Economic Growth, Economic Development, ARDL Bounds Tests, Wald Test, Zambia

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 19. 12. 2022

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: prof. Ing. Mansoor Maitah, Ph.D. Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Doctoral programme / field:
Economics and Management / Sector Economics and Economics of Enterprise