Abstract

Several attempts have been made by respective government to get a lasting solution to the issues of poverty in Africa. Agricultural sector has envisaged to provide lasting solution to this problem; hence, this study examined the relationship between agricultural productivity and poverty alleviation in Nigeria. The study made use of Auto regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) and the Causality effect to test for the long run behaviour and the casual effects of the variables respectively. The ARDL result indicate a long-run relationship between agricultural productivity and poverty alleviation in Nigeria. The short-run effect was carried out using ARDL ECM cointegration test, the result shows that about 117% of the disequilibrium in the short-run is corrected in the next period. Therefore, there is short-run relationship between HDI and AVAPW. Hence, there is short-run effect of agricultural productivity on poverty alleviation. Finally, the causality test showed a bi-directional relationship between HDI and AGDP, and there was no causal relationship between HDI and AVAPW. The findings from the ARDL show that agricultural productivity can be used to reduce the poverty level, however, the magnitude was very low. Evidence from the causal test shows that there is bi-directional relationship between poverty and agricultural productivity in Nigeria. This study therefore recommends that the government should embark on commercial farmers development plans which sole aim would be towards the eradication of poverty in Nigeria; this will go a long way in promoting agricultural productivity.