# Information and Communication Technologies and Agricultural Production: New Evidence from Africa
## 4 Results and Discussion
### Panel ARDL Elasticities of Impacts of Digital Tools on Agricultural Production
In a nutshell, we expect both crop and livestock production in these countries to increase in these counties in the long run when their adjusted net national income per capita increases. Ironically, the variable \"domestic credit to the private sector by bank\" was not statistically significant under crop production category. This implies that the variable \"domestic credit to private sector by bank\" does not have a long-run relationship with crop production in these African countries. However, domestic credit to the private sector statistically increased livestock production. A unit increase in domestic credit to the private sector by the bank would increase livestock production index by 0.392. Credit is important in agricultural production [82]. Rural population was statistically significant at 1% for both crop and the livestock production categories. Again, the estimates recorded for rural population under the crop production and livestock production categories were \(-0.293\) and \(1.507\), respectively. Thus, rural population negatively affects crop production but positively affects livestock production in the aforementioned 32 African countries. All other things being equal, a unit increase in rural population will decrease crop production by approximately 0.293%. On the other hand, we expect livestock production to increase by approximately 1.507% when there is a unit increase in rural population. In brief, we expect crop production to decrease in the long run when the rural population increases. This may be connected to increasing youth migration out of the rural areas to urban areas, which leaves a burden on the agricultural workforce. Livestock production is expected to increase in the long run when the rural population increases. This result conforms to most of the related literature [92; 93; 94]. With regards to the short-run results, notice that two out of the six variables were statistically significant under the crop production category and none were statistically significant under the livestock production category. The first variable to consider under the short relationship is the mobile cellular subscriptions. From Table 8, it can clearly be seen that the variable is statistically significant under crop production. This implies that mobile cellular subscriptions have a significant influence on crop production in the 32 African countries in the short run. Holding all other variables constant, a percentage increase in mobile cellular subscriptions increased crop production in the aforementioned 32 African countries by approximately 0.12% in the short run. Mobile cellular subscriptions are not statistically significant for livestock production. This indicates that the variable \"mobile cellular subscription\" has no influence on livestock production in the 32 African countries in the short run. [PERSON] [50] observed similar findings using 10-year panel data, where they indicated that mobile phones had an insignificant impact on production. We note that the variable \"fixed telephone subscriptions\" was not statistically significant under the livestock production category. Thus, fixed telephone subscription has no effect on livestock production in the 32 African countries in the short run. On the other hand, the variable was statistically significant at 10%. It also recorded an estimate of \(-0.089\). This indicates a negative relationship between fixed telephone subscriptions and crop production in these countries in the short run. All other things being equal, an increase in fixed telephone subscriptions will decrease crop production in these African countries by approximately 0.089%. Thus, we expect crop production in these African countries to decline in the short run when more individuals patronize the internet. This result contradicts [PERSON] [50], who observed that fixed telephone lines positively impacted crop production.