الفهرس 
Efficiency Of Maize Production In The Nile Basin Countries
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Abstract
The Nile river with an estimated length of over 6800 km, is the longest river flowing from north over 35 degrees of latitude. It is fed by main river systems: the White Nile, with its sources on the equatorial lake plateau (Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, DR Congo and Uganda), and the Blue Nile, with its sources in the Ethiopian highlands. The sources are located in humid regions, with an average rainfall of over 1000 mm per year. The arid region start in Sudan, the largest country of Africa, which can be divided into three rainfall zone: the extreme south of the country where rainfall ranges from 1200 to 1500 mm per year; the fertile clay plains where 400 to 800 mm of rain falls annually; and the desert northern third of the country where rainfall average only 20 mm per year. Further north, in Egypt, precipitation falls to less than 20 mm per year. The total area of the Nile basin represents 10.3% of the area of the continent and spreads over than ten countries.
This research attempted to study the efficiency of maize production in the Nile basin countries by using stochastic frontier approach to estimates the technical efficiency for maize production in the Nile basin countries during the time period 1993-2016 taken from FAOSTATA. We apply the stochastic frontier for efficiency measurement (Cobb-Douglas production function) and specifications of Battese and Coelli (1992) and (1995) are applied in four models of stochastic frontier. The coefficient of maize area is positive and significant implying that increasing the maize area could significant enhance maize production. The study however shows that the Nile basin countries that are less efficient in maize production should make some adjustment to their agricultural policies to improve the capacity of famers to efficiently use the existing resources to increase maize production.