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Agriculture expenditure and food security in West Africa

Nature Food volume 3, page 811 (2022)Cite this article

Food security and improved nutrition in Africa are central objectives of the 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly; United Nations, 2015), as well as the Maputo (Maputo Declarations on Agriculture and Food Security; African Union, 2003) and Malabo (Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods; African Union, 2014) declarations. According to the latter, African countries are expected to dedicate at least 10% of their national budgets to agriculture — a key sector to regional economic growth and food production. Yet, progress towards these objectives has been scant in most of the continent, requiring a closer examination of which indicators have improved and the factors mediating such outcomes.

Now, Madalitso Kamenya, from the University of Pretoria, and colleagues have assessed the impact of public expenditure on four food security indicators in nine countries from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). They applied a fixed-effect generalized least squares model to a panel dataset from 2000 to 2016, compiled from public sources. Each dimension of food security was represented by an indicator — namely availability (average dietary energy supply adequacy; ADESA), access (prevalence of undernourishment), utilization (prevalence of child stunting) and stability (per capita food production variability).

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  1. Nature Food https://www.nature.com/natfood/

    Juliana Gil

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  1. Juliana Gil
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Correspondence to Juliana Gil.

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Gil, J. Agriculture expenditure and food security in West Africa. Nat Food 3, 811 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00625-5

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