Improving the resilience of African Countries to Food Shocks

Roland Maio and Michael Puma

No 332894, Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project

Abstract: Most African countries are poorly positioned to deal with unanticipated shocks to the global food system. To mitigate vulnerabilities to this systemic risk, a new perspective on food security is needed that both supports diverse trade relationships for staple foods and promotes some degree of self sufficiency in domestic food production in African countries. Here we use a network-based shock propagation model to explore the sensitivity of African countries to short-term production shocks in the global food system. We examine the global cereals trade network for two periods, 1996-2000 and 2006-2010. Our results reveal two trends in African food status: an intensifying dependence on imported cereals complemented by a decline in intra-African trade. We find that maintaining stable intra-African trade links is a critical and effective strategy for absorbing and mitigating food-supply disruptions. Although intra-African trade represents 5.4% and 4.1% of African trade in the 1996-2000 and 2006-2010 time periods respectively, stabilizing intra-African trade links reduces individual African countries exposure to supply shocks by 26% and 20% and to consumption shocks by 22% and 14%, respectively.

Keywords: Food; Security; and; Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/332894/files/8776.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332894

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().