Abstract

Improving agricultural productivity, agricultural commercialization and improving the livelihoods of the population are the main challenges in the Sub-Saharan Africa region where the majority of the population are poor and live in rural areas. Several factors including lack of improved farming practices, poor infrastructure, low level of market integration to the world market and within countries, climate change, and inadequate policy support restrained the performance of the agricultural sector in the region. This thesis consists of four chapters, three empirical and one theoretical chapter. Each of the empirical chapters deals with selected topics pertinent to the agriculture sector in Ethiopia. The theoretical chapter reviews the agricultural policies adopted by the existing government and implemented over the past two decades. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter analyzes the impacts of climate change on crop yields and yield vari-ability in Ethiopia. The impacts of climate change appear to be different across crops and regions. However, the future crop yield levels largely depend on future technological development in farming practices. The third chapter aims to understand the extent of price transmissions from the world markets to domestic grain markets, and the extent of market integration in domestic grain markets. The fourth chapter investigates and compares the volatilities of oilseeds prices in the world and domestic markets. The data used in the second, third and fourth chapters are obtained from various secondary sources. The fifth chapter reviews major agricultural policies implemented over the last two decades and identifies policies that either enhanced the growth of the agricultural sector or holding back its performance. The sixth chapter underlines the main conclusions and indicates future research areas.