ABSTRACT
In predominantly traditional farming systems that prevail in most parts of Africa, as emphasized earlier, human labor plays a crucial role in agricultural production. Among the several bottlenecks, labor bottlenecks are, to quote the World Bank (1981), "a key constraint to agricultural progress in Africa," and, furthermore, "a breakthrough in ox-drawn cultivation," says the World Bank, "would obviously have the most powerful effect on labor productivity." This does not imply that the labor constraint is the only or the most important constraint on agricultural production in the region. However, it needs to be stressed that development policy in the African region should focus on measures that increase labor productivity, in particular the use of farm implements in addition to other improved farm practices such as the introduction of drought-resistant high-yielding varieties of seeds and the use of fertilizers. Although the use of animal traction has been recognized and often stressed as an important technological innovation in the setting of a highly labor intensive production system (Barrett 1982; Singh 1981), not much progress has been achieved in this respect (World Bank 1981). similarly, the semi-arid, rain-fed, cereals, such as sorghum and millet have remained by and large unaffected by the so-called Green Revolution. Despite the inflow of foreign assistance, including the establishment of several regional agricultural research centers, very little seems to have gone to farmer's field with any major impact on yields of cereal crops in West African countries (Singh et al. 1984).
