Moving off Agrarian Societies: Agricultural Productivity to Facilitate Economic Transformations and Non‐agricultural Employment Growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The main objectives of this work are two‐fold: we seek first to specify the relationship between agricultural productivity and non‐agricultural employment and second to assess the effect of productivity growth on the employment of the off‐farm sector in the long run. The econometric results of our panel vector autoregressive depict a causal relationship with single direction from agricultural productivity to non‐agricultural employment. Between productivity and inequalities, causality seems to function only from productivity to inequalities. This explains the fact that productivity growth generates significant inequalities in the distribution of income, which is necessary to enhancing investments in the agricultural sector.