Files
Abstract
Traditional agriculture in Sudan occupies 60% of the cultivated land and employs 65% of the
population engaged in agricultural production, but yields are low and productivity is threatened
by drought and civil conflicts. Traditional agriculture has therefore contributed an average of
only 16% to the total agricultural GDP in the last decade. This paper examines the implications
of improving the efficiency of traditional agriculture in Sudan and assesses efficiency gains
brought about by trade liberalization. Efficiency improvement experiments are implemented by
augmenting the efficiency parameters of labor, capital and land in a computable general
equilibrium (CGE) framework. The CGE model uses the most recent Sudanese social accounting
matrix (SAM) that comprises 10 agricultural sectors. The results show that improving the
agricultural efficiency improves the GDP, welfare, trade balance, output and competitiveness of
agricultural exports. Moreover, the resilience of traditional agriculture in Sudan improves with
liberalization.