Rôle du paludisme dans l'efficience technique des producteurs de coton du nord de la Côte-d'Ivoire

The Malaria Effects on Technical Efficiency of Cotton Growers in Northern Côte d'Ivoire This article assess the role of malaria on the agricultural development and more precisely on technical efficiency in the context of cotton crop in the Korhogo region in the North of Côte d'Ivoire. The stochastic frontier production function incorporating a model for technical inefficiency effects (Battese and Coelli, 1995) was applied in order to check the hypothesis that the efficiency deviations between farmers should be explained by the disparity of the presence and the severity of malaria infection among the farmers and their family. Field data was collected by the authors between March 1997 and February 1998 on 700 rural households living in three production systems differently exposed to the malaria risk. Three malaria indicators were used. There were the prevalence, in the active (11-55 years old) family members of the farm, of parasitemia, high and very high densities of Plasmodium falciparum. The results of the model and the distribution of farm efficiency according to the presence and the severity of malaria infection obviously determine a critical threshold above which malaria has a negative effect on technical efficiency in the cotton crop. Then, farm households in which the proportion of actives with a high density of Plasmodium falciparum (more than 499 parasites/pl of blood) was higher or equal to 25 %, were less efficient than the farm households in which this density is lower.