Impact of Climate Change on Food Prices in Eastern and Southern Africa
Date
2022-10
Authors
Odongo, Maureen
Misati, Roseline
Kamau, Anne
Kethi, Ngoka
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research Consortium
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.