HIV/AIDS pandemic and agricultural production in Cameroon

Abstract

Whether HIV/AIDS affects agricultural production in Cameroon is purely an empirical issue due to controversy in results over the years. This study has as objectives to assess factors that affect the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and to explore the influence of HIV/AIDS on agricultural production in Cameroon. The 2007 Household Consumption Survey is use as our source of data together with other variables imported into the survey data from the ministries in charge of public health and agriculture. Estimates are obtained using instrumental variables two-stage least squares regression method. The result shows that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon is strongly influence by level of education, age, occupation and environmental characteristics, while the main result reveals that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS correlates negatively with agricultural production. These results have implications for agricultural policy instruments that could offer interventions to HIV/AIDS affected persons to mitigate the negative effect on agricultural production.

Keywords

• HIV/AIDS
• agricultural production
• instrumental variable
• Cameroon