Abstract

Small-scale agriculture expansion accounts for 90 percent of natural habitat loss in Sub-Saharan Africa. The farmers at the forest frontier are rarely there by preference, but because market frictions trap them outside of off-farm jobs. These frictions sustain agricultural employment above its socially optimal level and impose an environmental externality: each new farmer who cannot access an off-farm job must expand cultivation, including into difficult-to-protect lands. Addressing these frictions could therefore improve workers’ welfare while reducing pressure on natural habitats. We test this logic with a randomized controlled trial involving 1,324 young farmers near Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our main intervention is a three-month guaranteed job placement in urban SMEs, designed to address migration costs, matching frictions, information asymmetries, and employment risk. A secondary treatment offers 10 days of local casual work as a status quo benchmark. We cross-randomize these interventions with an environmental education session to shift community attitudes towards the park. The internship increases migration by 16%, doubles formal employment one month after its end, and reduces farming days by 19%. Cultivated land area and support for the park are unaffected. After six months, migration remains while other effects fade. The casual work treatment produces null effects across the board. Environmental education do improve park perceptions slightly. Our results suggest that labor market interventions can reallocate workers away from the forest frontier, but that thin urban labor markets limit the scope for sustained structural transformation.

Featuring Richard Nikiema (CEE-M) and Sébastien Desbureaux (CEE-M), who will present this project, carried out in collaboration with Stefan Dercon and Ashley Pople of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford.

Practical information