Girmay Berhe Araya from the School of Economics and Business has successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Land Markets and Agricultural Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa", June 2025
Summary of the Thesis
This dissertation comprises four papers based on survey data from Tigrai in northern Ethiopia. It investigates technology adoption, household demographics, and land rental market participation in the context of enabling sustainable rural livelihoods.
Paper 1 examines an increase in fertilizer uptake observed in the study area from 2006 to 2015 and the implications for manure use, focusing on the role of population density, market access, and irrigation. Results show that fertilizer use is higher in areas with high population density and good market access. Regarding the relationship between fertilizer use and manure use, our findings show that fertilizer and manure are substitutes at the extensive margin in areas with low population density and poor market access. At the same time, fertilizer and manure are complements at the extensive margin and substitutes at the intensive margin in areas with good market access.
Paper 2 explores the role of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on manure use by smallholder farm households. The PSNP may encourage manure use by increasing livestock ownership among participating households – a pattern observed in previous studies - and by promoting agricultural technologies, such as compost preparation, through training and official encouragement. However, the PSNP may also compete for labour that could have been used for collecting and transporting manure. This study tests these competing hypotheses empirically. Despite owning fewer livestock, PSNP member households use the same amount of manure as non-member households.
Paper 3 examines whether the PSNP may have influenced the household size and dependency ratio of member households over time. The PSNP can contribute to increased household size (and dependency ratio) since it protects member households from shocks that may cause forced migration. PSNP also provides additional employment opportunities for adult household 1members and may encourage member households to have more children as benefits from the program can be used to secure consumption of the household. Our findings show that PSNP member households had retained larger household sizes five and 10 years after the program started than non-member households. Member households also had a larger dependency ratio than non-member (counterfactual) households five years after the program started (20052010). However, this effect had disappeared by 2015, possibly due to the downscaling of the program and partial graduation of members.
Paper 4 examines the role of the Second-Stage Land Registration and Certification Program (SSLRC) on tenure security of landholders and its effect on land market participation of landlord and smallholder farm households. The SSLRC is an improvement over the First-Stage Land Registration and Certification (FSLRC) as it is a plot-level certificate with a map of the plot, and is part of a digital registry, that is easier to update than the FSLR that included no maps, was issued at household level and was only paper-based. Our results show that the SSLRC is associated with enhanced tenure security. Still, our study took place in 2015, only a year after the SSLRC was implemented and there has not yet been any effect on the land rental market participation by landlord farm households.