Impact of Agricultural Production on Economic Growth in Zimbabwe

To achieve inclusive growth, and poverty and inequality reduction, Africancountries should enhance labour-intensive agricultural production due totheir abundance of natural resources and labour. In this paper, we examinethe impact of agriculture on the economic growth of Zimbabwe usingthe Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model employing data coveringthe period 1970 to 2019. The results show that agricultural productionhas a significant positive impact on economic growth in the short run whileshowing no impact on economic growth in the long run.Additionally, thestudy confirms that inflation, government expenditure and gross fixed capitalformation have a positive impact on economic growth in both the longrun and short run. Although the agricultural sector plays a salient role inthe early stages of economic development, it is, however, not able to maintainsustainable economic growth over a long period in Zimbabwe. Additionalmacro-economic policy levers are required to compliment agriculturalproduction and promote sustainable economic growth.