Enabling trade across borders and food security in Africa
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Enabling trade across borders and food security in Africa Isaac Bonuedi 1
&
Kofi Kamasa 2
&
Eric Evans Osei Opoku 3
Received: 5 April 2019 / Accepted: 1 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Widespread food insecurity remains a daunting challenge in Africa, despite significant gains in global efforts to eliminate hunger over the last three decades. This paper examines the effects of easing trade across borders – through reductions in documents, time, and costs to export and import – on food security outcomes in Africa. To control for endogeneity, this paper employs the first-difference instrumental variable estimator based on panel data covering 45 African countries over the period 2006–2015. The results reveal that poor trade facilitation constitutes a significant driver of food insecurity in Africa. In particular, ineffective trade facilitation is associated with significant increments in the prevalence of undernourishment and depth of food deficit, as well as reductions in dietary energy supply adequacy and access to sanitation facilities. The results show that food availability and food access are significantly hampered by higher documentation requirements and lengthier export and import times. The results suggest that reductions in delays from documentary and border compliance promise to be the most effective trade facilitation reforms to enhance food security in Africa. Keywords Food security . Trade facilitation . First-difference instrumental variable . Africa JEL classification O24 . Q18 . F13 . C36
1 Introduction
… Africa has the ability to grow and deliver good quality food to put on the dinner tables of the continent’s families… However, this potential is not being realized because farmers face more trade barriers in getting their food to market than anywhere else in the world. Too * Isaac Bonuedi [email protected]; [email protected] Kofi Kamasa [email protected] Eric Evans Osei Opoku [email protected] 1
Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany
2
Department of Management Studies, University of Mines and Technology, P. O. Box 237, Tarkwa, Ghana
3
Department of Economics and Finance, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
often, borders get in the way of getting food to homes and communities which are struggling with too little to eat. Makhtar Diop, the World Bank Vice President for Africa (World Bank 2012). Achieving a world without hunger remains elusive as hunger pangs continue to afflict about 821 million people today (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) et al. 2018). The global burden of undernourishment is most substantial in Asia (515.1 million) and Africa (256.5 million) (FAO et al. 2018), which are also home to several of the world’s poorest countries. Despite remarkable declines in global hunger rates since 2000, the levels of hunger in these regions are considered serious or alarming, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) (von Grebmer et al. 2018). Disturbingly, undernourish
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