3 special attention to agriculture. They also include a number of methodological innovations such as data gathering at the individual and plot level, enabling more gender disaggregated analysis. The data are made publicly available one year after their collection.<sup>4</sup> An international consortium of researchers under the Agriculture in Africa Telling Myths from Facts project led by the World Bank, with complementary financing from the African Development Bank<sup>5</sup> , exploited the first rounds of these surveys to revisit common wisdom on African agriculture and its farmers’ livelihoods in the areas of agricultural technology, market engagement and structural transformation. Studies were each time framed around a cross‐country investigation of the conventional wisdom in these areas. A total of 12 broad stylized facts and sub‐facts on African agriculture and rural livelihoods were thus reviewed, the results of which are brought together in a special issue of Food Policy _,_ entitled _“Agriculture in Africa ‐ Telling Myths from Facts”._ All articles are available on line and open access.

This synthesis summarizes the key findings and reflects on their implications, including through a number of easily accessible and replicable tables and figures. This facilitates the policy dialogue and further research efforts including further updating as new information from LSMS‐ISA or related surveys becomes available. The findings at times confirm conventional knowledge, as one would hope, and put it on more solid empirical footing. More often they fine‐tune our understanding. But they also reveal some myths and raise new issues. Overall, the findings underscore the high academic and policy return from investing in regular, nationally representative data collection and continuous examination of conventional wisdoms.

The synthesis proceeds as follows. The next section expands on the underlying data base and the methodological approach taken. This precedes a synoptic overview of the 12 wisdoms revisited and the core findings obtained when submitting them to the data. Section three expands on each of them, including their implications for agricultural and rural development policies. Section four concludes.

# 2 Myths, Materials, and Methods

The LSMS‐ISA Initiative<sup>6</sup> supports national statistical offices in the collection of at least four rounds of nationally representative household panel survey data in eight African countries during 2008–20. The papers in this study mainly draw on the first rounds collected during 2009‐2012 in six of these countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda), which together cover more than 40 percent of the population in SSA and most of its agro‐ecological zones. While this does not make them representative for SSA as such, together they provide a broad picture of the emerging new reality, and also allow for

> 4 The Initiative is financed by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with other contributors, and managed by the Development Economics Data Group of the World Bank Group. Several larger data initiatives are also underway to remedy the agricultural data situation, such as the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics, and the ensuing regional Action Plans.

> 5 Other participating institutions included the <mark>Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Cornell University, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the London School of Economics, the Maastricht School of Management, the University of Pretoria, the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the University of Trento, and Yale University. F</mark> or a ‐ ‐ detailed description of the project and its collaborators, see http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa <u>myths and‐facts.</u>

> 6 For a detailed description and access to the data and their documentation, see <u>http://www.worldbank.org/lsms.</u>