Africa's rural population continues to expand rapidly, and labor productivity in agriculture and many rural-off farm activities remains low. This review uses the lens of a dual economy and the associated patterns of agricultural, rural, and structural transformation to review the evolution of Africa's rural employment and its inclusiveness. Many African countries still find themselves in an early stage of the agricultural and rural transformation. Given smaller sectoral productivity gaps than commonly assumed, greater size effects, and larger spillovers, investment in agriculture and the rural off-farm economy remains warranted to broker the transition to more and more productive rural employment. The key policy questions thus become how best to invest in the agri-food system (on and increasingly also off the farm) and how best to generate demand for nonagricultural goods and services that rural households can competitively produce. Informing these choices continues to present a major research agenda, with digital technologies, the imperative of greening, and intra-African liberalization raising many unarticulated and undocumented opportunities and challenges.

中文翻译：

---

非洲农村就业：趋势与挑战


非洲的农村人口继续迅速增长，农业和许多农村农业活动的劳动生产率仍然很低。本文从二元经济的视角以及农业、农村和结构转型的相关模式出发，回顾了非洲农村就业的演变及其包容性。许多非洲国家仍处于农业和农村转型的早期阶段。鉴于部门生产率差距比通常假设的要小、规模效应更大、溢出效应更大，对农业和农村非农经济的投资仍然是必要的，以促成向越来越有成效的农村就业过渡。因此，关键的政策问题变成了如何最好地投资于农业粮食体系（在农场内和越来越多地在农场外），以及如何最好地产生对农村家庭能够竞争性生产的非农业产品和服务的需求。为这些选择提供信息继续是一项重要的研究议程，数字技术、绿色化的必要性和非洲内部的自由化带来了许多未明确和未记录的机遇和挑战。