Impact of Climate Change on Food Prices in Eastern and Southern Africa

Abstract

Climate change manifested in global greenhouse emissions, extreme weather patterns, and rising temperatures continues to be a global concern. Developing countries are most vulnerable to climate change, frequently experiencing extreme weather patterns such as drought, floods, heatwaves, storms, precipitation variations, and changes in sea level with devastating effects on agriculture, food security, nutrition, housing, health, travel, infrastructure and incomes. These developments threaten efforts to reduce extreme poverty, especially in low income countries, and have led to reversals of gains for certain groups in terms of incomes, health, and education outcomes besides increasing global inequalities. The paper focuses on the impact of climate change on the prices of all goods and services with a bias on its impact on the price of food in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Specifically, the study isolates climate disaster events in each of the countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa region and assesses their implications on food prices besides analyzing the dynamics of the key climate change indicators and their implications on prices in the selected countries. The main countries of interest include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.