Agricultural Exports and Agricultural Productivity in the Selected East African Community Countries

ABSTRACT The article empirically examined the effects of agricultural exports on agricultural productivity based on cross-country data over the period 2000–2021. Panel data estimation methods were applied in the study using data from Food and Agricultural Organization Statistics (FAOSTAT) and the World Bank. The relationship between the variables was analyzed using the panel cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) method. The CS-ARDL results provided evidence that agricultural exports and agricultural productivity enjoyed significant short-run and long-run relationships. The Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test was used for estimating the causal relationships between variables. The novelty of this method is its ability to generate causality results for each country. There was unidirectional causal flow from agricultural exports to agricultural productivity. By increasing the demand for a country’s domestic products, agricultural exports promote the adoption of more efficient farming technologies and accessibility to international markets. This permits farmers to improve the quality and scale of production in order to remain competitive globally. The study recommended the provision of subsidies to farmers and improvement of intraregional trade logistics. Improvements in institutional quality were also recommended to address challenges attributed to cross-sectional dependence and intraregional trade inefficiencies.