POPULATION migration has had immense social, political, and economic
significance for countries in West Africa. In recent years, as transport and
communications have improved and employment and output have expanded,
migratory movements have increased greatly in volume. This paper
uses an interregional programming model to investigate the relation
between labour migration and agricultural production in Ghana (formerly
the Gold Coast), where migration has been described as one of the primary
factors in the country's life [9, p. 1]. In Ghana, as elsewhere in West
Africa, the principal form of labour mobility is temporary migration. The
central thesis of this study is that temporary migration improves the
allocation of resources and has contributed significantly to growth of output
in Ghana. In particular, because of regional variations in the seasonality
of agricultural production, temporary migration is more efficient than
permanent migration.