Social protection policy and agricultural labour outcome in West Africa

ABSTRACT This study engages panel data consisting of 15 West African countries that are members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). To resolve the possible issues of endogeneity, the system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) was applied. The data for the analysis was sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), and the World Development Indicators (WDI) for the period 2005–2018. Findings show that all social protection indicators included in the study are positive and significant in explaining the level of agricultural labour outcome in West Africa. The implication of the result is that policy for social inclusion, building human resources, equity in public resource use and overall social protection coverage may increase agricultural labour outcomes by 0.77%, 0.82% and 0.26%, respectively. The study concludes that to raise labour productivity in West Africa towards the achievement of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially, SDG-1, there is a need for social protection coverage to mitigate shocks and vulnerability.