Title: Estimates of Factors Affecting Economic Growth in the Agricultural Sector in the Development Plan
Abstract: Agricultural sector contribute about 36% of the East African Community’s Gross Domestic Product (World Bank, 2009), 80 per cent of the populace depend on agriculture directly and indirectly for food, employment and income, while about 40 million people in EAC (East African Countries) suffer from hunger and the agricultural sector still retains a lot of untapped potential, specifically for commercial farming. However, economic growth target for agriculture sector can be achieved by stimulating three factors; capital, labor and total productivity of capital and labor through R&D. This study applied panel random effect model on EAC countries data, 2000-2014. Random effects regression results showed that all explanatory variables had a significant and positive relationship with the dependent variable. From the findings the study recommends: R&D to be allocated more funds; more research scientists and agricultural labourers to be employed; R&D based knowledge to be disseminated to the public through publications; firms to train agricultural labourers on how new technologies are being used and also to allocate them duties and responsibilities that match their skills and that agricultural capital costs be subsidised.