Healthy diets, costs and food policies in the Sahel and West Africa

Yan Bai, Jill Bouscarat, Kristina Sokourenko, Philipp Heinrigs and Koffi Zougbédé

No 39, West African Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: The Sahel and West Africa region is facing a serious food and nutrition security crisis with high rates of acute malnutrition, combined with high rates of malnourishment and over-nourishment – the “triple burden of malnutrition”. Poor-quality diets are the root of all forms of malnutrition, as well as common non-communicable diseases, and are responsible for an estimated one in five adult deaths globally. The high cost of food is a key barrier to accessing a healthy diet. Even before the recent global inflation in food prices, West Africa’s food prices were 30%-40% higher than other regions in the world of comparable income levels. The paper analyses the costs of healthy diets in 17 countries in the Sahel and West Africa and which food groups drive up costs. The observed high cross-country variability in costs and cost composition points to a need for more targeted and nutrition-sensitive food system policies as well as the need to invest in better food price data and monitoring capacities.

Keywords: Cost of diet; Food prices; Food systems; Healthy diets; West Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O55 Q11 Q13 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-07-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:swacaa:39-en

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