This project investigates the relationship between agricultural credit, fertilizer use, and crop productivity, a topic of significant importance in Western Africa for agricultural economics and development.
Ø OVERALL OBJECTIVE: Investigating the effect of agricultural inputs (fertilizers) and agricultural credit, on the productivity of crop items in West Africa.
Ø METHODS
Data collection
The data are obtained and downloaded from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations' statistical database, FAOSTAT. [1]. It included Agricultural credit in USD for Western Africa from 2010 to 2022. The use of fertilizers in dollar amount and the overall crop productivity in tons.
Analysis
We used Tableau to visualize the trends of the three variables over time on a single graph. In RStudio, we conducted a multicollinearity test between the independent variables before running the final model. We then performed a linear regression analysis to quantify the combined effect of agricultural inputs (fertilizers) and agricultural credit on crop productivity in West Africa.