Sahel is a drought-prone area in West Africa, and the agriculture sector remains the main source of employment in the rural communities. However, inter-annual rainfall variability significantly hampers the performance of agriculture in Sahel. Over the past four decades, drought episodes have been the norm rather than the exception in the region. Using a just-Pope stochastic production function, this paper assesses crop yields responses to persistent drought spells in eight countries of Sahel. Six-month standardized precipitation indexes (SPI) along with degree-days indexes were calculated and maximum likelihood estimations were carried out for specific crops using data spanning 1970 to 2000. The results show that while an increase in the degree-days tends to be harmful to crop yields, SPI and precipitation intensity index have statistically positive impacts on the mean crop yields. The adaptation to climate variability suggests a modernization of the farming techniques such as the reliance on irrigated agriculture.

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This article examines the effect of land reform on poverty in Southern African Development Community countries while controlling for factors that have been shown to be important in explaining poverty in Africa. The percentage of the population without access to clean water is used as a proxy for poverty. Empirical results provide evidence that countries that embarked on land reform experienced an increase in the percentage of the population without access to clean water for the period 1990-2007. More specifically, our results show that the impact of the willing seller-willing buyer land reform approach is higher than the impact of the expropriation land reform approach during the study period.