**Togo has also the highest fraction of arable land to country area within ECOWAS (** Figure 32 **).** Despite its population density, the amount of arable land per person is second highest in the region, only behind Niger. At the same time, Togo has relatively limited access to water resources, with the fraction of irrigated land (as a percentage of total croplands) being one of the lowest in the world. Water pollution is also a matter of concern in terms of health hazard and impact on the fishing sector, and deforestation linked to agricultural practices is also an issue to be accounted for.

**Based on Collier and O’Connell (2004)’s classification of countries, Togo is considered to be a “resource‐poor coastal economy” which is generally considered as positive.**<sup>33</sup> The authors’ cross‐country empirical work shows that, overall, countries in this category tend to grow faster than resource‐rich economies and than resource‐poor, landlocked economies. However, in the reduced sample of SSA countries, resource‐poor coastal economies still do better than resource‐poor landlocked economies but grow slower than resource‐rich countries, indicating that the impact of “syndromes”<sup>34</sup> and of the Dutch disease associated with availability of primary commodities is less strong in SSA countries. Yet, another classification by World Bank (2008) has Togo as an agricultural based economy<sup>35</sup> showing its continued reliance on primary commodities and traditional activities and the mostly rural character of its population. Note however, that many countries that are resource‐poor are in Collier and O’Connell’s classification also considered to be agricultural based economies. These concepts are not at odds as those countries with a sizeable base of minerals, energy and forest, and exports (not GDP) counts for the resource rich country classification.

**Togo is not immune to hazards of natural origin, but natural disasters recorded in the country have not been as frequent or as severe as in other Sub‐Saharan African countries.** EMDAT<sup>36</sup> , the most comprehensive database on disasters of natural and technological records a total of about 1,200 deaths and 770,000 affected in Togo between 1965 and 2005, most of them linked to epidemics, droughts and floods (Table 9). This is not an insignificant number, but as shown in the table the number of killed and affected taking population size into account is much smaller than the average for SSA.

**Table 9: Summary of Natural Disasters since 1990, Togo.**

||**Togo **|**SSA excl. Togo **|
|---|---|---|
|Population 2000|5,247,486|670,817,822|
|Killed 65-05|1,172|1,061,604|
|Affected 65-05|766,161|420,367,666|
|Killed/year|29|26,540|
|Affected/year|19,154|10,509,192|
|Killed/1000000people|6|40|
|Affected/1000 people|3,650|15,666|

_Source_ : EM‐DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database.

> 33 A country is deemed to be resource‐rich if all the following are true: 1) Current rents from energy, minerals and forests exceed 5% of GNI; 2) A forward moving average of these rents exceeds 10% of GNI; and, 3) The share of primary commodities in exports exceeds 20% for at least a 5‐year period following this initial year.

> 34 “Syndromes” are linked, in general, to the absence of political stability and of market friendly policies.

> 35 World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report that focus on the subject of Agriculture for Development, classifies countries as “Agricultural based”, “Transforming” or “Urbanized” based on the contribution of agriculture GDP real growth to an economy’s total GDP growth, and on the fraction of rural poor to total poor population in the country. Thus way, countries where agriculture contributes with more than 33% of income growth and have a fraction of rural poor population to total poverty headcount higher than 85% are considered to be agricultural based. Togo’s figures are 42% in the former variable and 86% in the latter by 2007 and 2006 respectively.

> 36 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain, Belgium,

33