Building on the work of earlier studies that looked at trends in and returns to federal public expenditures on agriculture in Nigeria, this paper explores spending patterns at the sub-national state level over a nine-year period, as well as trends in agricultural and economic performance and indicators of household welfare. Our examination focuses on two groupings of states – the full 37 state units of Nigeria (the 36 states, plus the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja); and the seven states that are the focus in Nigeria of the Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) of the United States Agency for International Development. Sub-national agricultural spending as a share of aggregate agricultural spending in Nigeria is large, given the stronger role for sub-national governments in agriculture than is the case in other sectors. However, we find that the share of state-level expenditures on agriculture as a share of aggregate state-level expenditures is still relatively low, an average of 3.86 percent over the period 2007 to 2015. While the prioritization of agriculture spending varies greatly year by year, the variation over time does not have a discernible long-run upwards or downwards trend. We also find that agricultural expenditures are more capital intensive than are overall public expenditures at state level, but that capital expenditures as a share of total agriculture spending has decline over the last decade, as is the case overall in Nigeria’s industrial sectors. We conclude that efforts to strengthen state-level agricultural spending in Nigeria merits greater attention, while putting in place measures to ensure improved effectiveness in any such spending.

Growing agriculture remains important for countries like Nigeria where, despite economic transformation at sectoral levels, a significant share of employment still originates from the agricultural sector. The question has continued to be debated of whether increasing Public Expenditures on Agriculture (PEA) is the way to grow agriculture. The needed evidence-base for this debate, while gradually growing, has remained insufficient in African countries, including Nigeria. This has been particularly the case as regards to evidence on the effects of PEA at household levels. This study attempted to partially fill this gap, using state and local government area (LGA)-level PEA figures and household data in Nigeria. The findings suggest that PEA has positive effects on household-level agricultural outcomes in various dimensions, including overall production levels, profits, access to public extension services or subsidized fertilizer, as well as private investments and, in some cases, agricultural mechanization. These patterns generally underscore the hypothesis that increasing direct support to the agricultural sector is likely to have greater effects on agricultural outcomes, compared to alternative strategies of developing agriculture indirectly through the support of other social-sectors like education, health, social safety-nets, among others. Increasing PEA by increasing the agricultural share of public expenditures (PE), while keeping the overall size of PE constant, is found to be particularly effective, compared to alternative approaches of increasing the overall size of PE while keeping agricultural share unchanged. Such patterns may suggest that Ricardian Equivalence partly holds. Furthermore, different agricultural outcomes are found to respond to PEA from different sources (e.g., LGA or State), and types (e.g., recurrent or capital spending). Enhancing research capacity to identify appropriate sources and types of PEA for particular agricultural outcomes remains important.

This book takes forward our understanding of agricultural input subsidies in low income countries.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Whereas there is plenty of work looking at macroeconomic effect of public spending on growth and poverty in Africa as well as studies of the impact of spending or investment in one economic sector on outcomes in that sector or on broader welfare measures, this book fills a much needed gap in the research looking how the composition of public spending affects key development outcomes in the region. The book brings together recent analysis on the trends in, and returns to, public spending for agricultural growth and rural development in Africa. Case studies of selected African countries provide insights on the contributions of different types of public expenditures for poverty, growth and welfare outcomes, as well as insights into the constraints in gaining development mileage from investments in the agricultural sector.

The Federal Government of Nigeria has adopted an ambitious strategy to make Nigeria the world’s 20th largest economy by 2020. Sustaining such a pace of growth will entail rapid expansion of the level of activity in key carbon-emitting sectors, such as power, oil and gas, agriculture and transport. In the absence of policies to accompany economic growth with a reduced carbon foot-print, emissions of greenhouse gases could more than double in the next two decades. This study finds that there are several options for Nigeria to achieve the development objectives of vision 20:2020 and beyond, but stabilizing emissions at 2010 levels, and with domestic benefits in the order of 2 percent of GDP. These benefits include cheaper and more diversified electricity sources; more efficient operation of the oil and gas industry; more productive and climate –resilient agriculture; and better transport services, resulting in fuel economies, better air quality, and reduced congestion. The study outlines several actions that the Federal Government could undertake to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy, including enhanced governance for climate action, integration of climate consideration in the Agriculture Transformation Agenda, promotion of energy efficiency programs, scale-up of low carbon technologies in power generation (such as renewables an combined cycle gas turbines), and enhance vehicle fuel efficiency.