Download or read book Food Inflation in Sub Saharan Africa written by Mr.Emre Alper and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-01-18 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes food inflation trends in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2000 to 2016 using two novel datasets of disaggregated CPI baskets. Average food inflation is higher, more volatile, and similarly persistent as non-food non-fuel (NF/NF) inflation, especially in low-income countries (LICs) in SSA. We find evidence that food inflation became less persistent from 2009 onwards, related to recent improvements in monetary policy frameworks. We also find that high food prices are driven mainly by non-tradable food in SSA and there is incomplete pass-through from world food and fuel prices and exchange rates to domestic food prices. Taken together, these finding suggest that central banks in low-income countries with high and persistent food inflation should continue to pay attention to headline inflation to anchor inflation expectations. Other policy levers include reducing tariffs and improving storage and transport infrastructure to reduce food pressures.

Download or read book Staple Food Prices in Sub Saharan Africa An Empirical Assessment written by Cedric Okou and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-07-08 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the domestic and external drivers of local staple food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using data on domestic market prices of the five most consumed staple foods from 15 countries, this paper finds that external factors drive food price inflation, but domestic factors can mitigate these vulnerabilities. On the external side, our estimations show that Sub-Saharan African countries are highly vulnerable to global food prices, with the pass-through from global to local food prices estimated close to unity for highly imported staples. On the domestic side, staple food price inflation is lower in countries with greater local production and among products with lower consumption shares. Additionally, adverse shocks such as natural disasters and wars bring 1.8 and 4 percent staple food price surges respectively beyond generalized price increases. Economic policy can lower food price inflation, as the strength of monetary policy and fiscal frameworks, the overall economic environment, and transport constraints in geographically challenged areas account for substantial cross-country differences in staple food prices.

Download or read book On the Drivers of Inflation in Sub Saharan Africa written by Anh D. M. Nguyen and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-08-05 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perception that inflation dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are driven by supply shocks implies a limited role for monetary policy in influencing inflation in the short run. SSA’s rapid growth, its integration with the global economy, changes in the policy frameworks, among others, in the last decade suggest that the drivers of inflation may have changed. We quantitatively analyze inflation dynamics in SSA using a Global VAR model, which incorporates trade and financial linkages among economies, as well as the role of regional and global demand and inflationary spillovers. We find that in the past 25 years, the main drivers of inflation have been domestic supply shocks and shocks to exchange rate and monetary variables; but that, in recent years, the contribution of these shocks to inflation has fallen. Domestic demand pressures as well as global shocks, and particularly shocks to output, however, have played a larger role in driving inflation over the last decade. We also show that country characteristics matter—the extent of oil and food imports, vulnerability to weather shocks, economic importance of agriculture, trade openness and policy regime, among others, help in explaining the role of shocks.

Download or read book Monetary Policy in Sub Saharan Africa written by Andrew Berg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa present unique monetary policy challenges, from the high share of volatile food in consumption to underdeveloped financial markets; however most academic and policy work on monetary policy is aimed at much richer countries. Can economic models and methods invented for rich countries even be adapted and applied here? How does and should monetary policy work in sub-Saharan African? Monetary Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa answers these questions and provides practical tools and policy guidance to respond to the complex challenges of this region. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa have made great progress in stabilizing inflation over the past two decades. As they have achieved a degree of basic macroeconomic stability, policymakers are looking to avoid policy misalignments and respond appropriately to shocks in order to achieve stability and growth. Officially, they often have adopted "money targeting" frameworks, a regime that has long disappeared from almost all advanced and even emerging-market discussions. In practice, though, they are in many cases finding current regimes lacking, with opaque and sometimes inconsistent objectives, inadequate transmission of policy to the economy, and difficulties in responding to supply shocks. Monetary Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa takes a new approach by applying dynamic general equilibrium models suitably adapted to reflect key features of low-income countries for the analysis of monetary policy in sub-Saharan African countries. Using a progressive approach derived from the International Monetary Fund's extensive practice and research, Monetary Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa seeks to address what we know about the empirics of monetary transmission in low-income countries, how monetary policy can work in countries characterized by underdeveloped financial markets and opaque policy regimes, and how we can use empirical and theoretical methods largely derived in advanced countries to answer these questions. It then uses these key topics to guide policymakers as they attempt to adjust food price, terms of trade, aid shocks, and the effects of the global financial crisis.

Download or read book The Food and Financial Crises in Sub Saharan Africa Origins Impacts and Policy Implications written by M. B. Ndulo and published by CABI. This book was released on 2011 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic increases in food prices, as witnessed on a global scale in recent years, threaten the food security of hundreds of millions of the rural poor in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. This book focuses on recent food and financial crises as they have affected Africa, illustrating the problems using country case studies, that cover their origins, effects on agriculture and rural poverty, their underlying factors and making recommendations as to how such crises could best be addressed in the future.

Download or read book Global Supply Chain Disruptions Challenges for Inflation and Monetary Policy in Sub Saharan Africa written by Zo Andriantomanga and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2023-02-24 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a large disruption of global supply chains. This paper studies the implications of supply chain disruptions for inflation and monetary policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Increases in supply chain pressures have had a sizeable impact on headline, food, and tradable inflation for a panel of 29 sub-Saharan African countries from 2000 to 2022. Our findings suggest that central banks can stabilize inflation and output more efficiently by monitoring global supply chains and adjusting the monetary policy stance before the disruptions have fully passed through into all inflation components. The gains from monitoring supply chain disruptions are particularly large for open economies which tend to experience outsized second-round effects on the prices of non-tradable goods and services.

Download or read book Food Security in Sub Saharan Africa written by Stephen Devereux and published by ITDG Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most contributions reflect an evolution of thinking during the 1990s.

Download or read book Is Food Insecurity More Severe in South Asia or Sub Saharan Africa A Comparative Analysis Using Household Expenditure Survey Data written by Doris Wiesmann and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2007 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper uses data from national household expenditure surveys to explore whether food insecurity is more severe in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. It employs two indicators of the diet quantity dimension of food insecurity, or the inability to access sufficient food: the prevalence of food energy deficiency and the prevalence of severe food energy deficiency. It also employs two indicators of the diet quality dimension, indicating lack of access to nutritious food: the prevalence of low diet diversity and the percent of energy from staple foods. It finds the regions' food energy deficiency prevalences to be quite close (51 percent in South Asia, 57 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa). However, the prevalence of severe food energy deficiency, which is more life threatening, is higher in Sub-Saharan Africa (51 percent versus 35 percent in South Asia). From a diet quality standpoint, the regions appear to suffer from a comparable and high reliance on staple foods in the diet to the neglect of foods rich in protein and micronutrients, but that Sub-Saharan Africa may be doing worse, as reflected in less diverse diets. The results confirm that both regions suffer from deep food insecurity problems but point to Sub-Saharan Africa as the region with the more severe problem, particularly when it comes to the diet quantity dimension of food insecurity. In deciding which region should be given greater emphasis in the international allocation of scarce development resources, the fact that the numbers of people affected by food insecurity are higher in South Asia should be taken into consideration."IFPRI web site

Download or read book Unbearable Costs When Is Inflation Impeding Job Creation Evidence from Sub Saharan Africa written by Ibrahima Camara and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2023-03-03 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covid-19 and war-induced commodity price fluctuations, and broadening price pressures have led to a surge in inflation in many sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. To adjust to increasing costs, firms have resorted to several measures including shuttering offices, reducing businesses, laying off, and freezing hiring, thus putting at risk job creation and raising concerns of youth unemployment. This paper explores the effects of inflation on private employment growth in SSA using a large firm -level dataset from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. We find a non-linear relationship between inflation and job creation in SSA, with job creation being negatively correlated with inflation rate when the latter is above 14 percent. This finding holds regardless of the sector of activities of firms and the exchange rate regime. In addition, the paper finds some differential effects based on the type of products. An increase in fuel prices tends to be more detrimental to job creation than food prices. The study also provides evidence that the state of implementation of structural reforms matters. The results show that inflation reduces job opportunities mostly in countries with bad or no structural reforms.

Download or read book Rising Food Prices in Sub Saharan Africa written by Quentin Wodon and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The increase in food prices represents a major crisis for the world's poor. This paper aims to review the evidence on the potential impact of higher food prices on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines the extent to which policy responses will benefit the poor. The paper shows that rising food prices are likely to lead to higher poverty in sub-Saharan Africa as the negative impact on net poor consumers outweighs the benefits to poor producers. A recent survey shows that the most common policy response in sub-Saharan African countries is reducing taxes on food while outside the region price controls or targeted consumer subsidies are the most popular measure. Sub-Saharan African countries also have a higher prevalence of food-based safety net programs which are being scaled up to respond to rising prices. The review suggests that the benefits from reducing import tariffs on staples may accrue largely to the non-poor. Social protection programs show more promise, but geographic targeting is likely to be crucial in ensuring that benefits reach the neediest. The paper also argues that anti-poverty interventions ought to retain their focus on rural areas where poverty remains highest even after taking into account the adverse impact on the urban poor due to the rise in food prices.

Download or read book Food Insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa written by Lisa C. Smith and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2006 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Conceptual and empirical basis for measures of food insecurity -- Data and methods -- Estimates of food insecurity -- Comparison with FAO estimates and related measures -- Evidence on cross-country comparability and other reliability issues -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Data sets not included in the study and reasons why -- Appendix B: Data collection and processing by country -- Appendix C: Standard errors for estimates of food security measures -- Appendix D: Country food security profiles -- Appendix E: Methods of estimating global and regional food energy deficiency prevalences when data are not available for all countries -- Appendix F: Differences in food security measures across total expenditure quintiles when quintiles are not based on predicted expenditures.

Download or read book Climate Change and Chronic Food Insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa written by Diogo Miguel Salgado Baptista and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is intensifying food insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with lasting adverse macroeconomic effects, especially on economic growth and poverty. Successive shocks from the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 pandemic have increased food prices and depressed incomes, raising the number of people suffering from high malnutrition and unable to meet basic food consumption needs by at least 30 percent to 123 million in 2022 or 12 percent of SSA’s population. Addressing the lack of resilience to climate change—that critically underlies food insecurity in SSA—will require careful policy prioritization against a backdrop of financing and capacity constraints. This paper presents some key considerations and examples of tradeoffs and complementarities across policies to address food insecurity. Key findings include (1) Fiscal policies focused on social assistance and efficient public infrastructure investment can improve poorer households’ access to affordable food, facilitate expansion of climate-resilient and green agricultural production, and support quicker recovery from adverse climate events; (2) Improving access to finance is key to stepping up private investment in agricultural resilience and productivity as well as improving the earning capacity and food purchasing power of poorer rural and urban households; and (3) Greater regional trade integration, complemented with resilient transport infrastructure, enables sales of one country’s bumper harvests to its neighbors’ facing shortages. The international community can help with financial assistance—especially for the above-mentioned social assistance and key infrastructure areas—capacity development, and facilitating transfers of technology and know-how.

Download or read book Food Problems and Prospects in Sub Saharan Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Food Security Policy in Africa Between Disaster Relief and Structural Adjustment written by Gabriele Geier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the FAO, one person in three in sub-Saharan Africa suffers from malnutrition, and one in seven is in danger of dying. Most African countries no longer seem capable of ensuring that their people have access to sufficient food. Given the failure of past efforts the objectives of food security policies and their effectiveness have to be reconsidered. This book shows that the debate on food security policies has changed with the passage of time. The entitlement debate triggered by A. Sen had a major influence on this change but, the bearing of socio-economic structures on the food security of African households and their individual members are still not fully recognised.

Download or read book Rising Food Prices in Sub Saharan Africa written by Quentin T. Wodon and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The increase in food prices represents a major crisis for the world's poor. This paper aims to review the evidence on the potential impact of higher food prices on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines the extent to which policy responses will benefit the poor. The paper shows that rising food prices are likely to lead to higher poverty in sub-Saharan Africa as the negative impact on net poor consumers outweighs the benefits to poor producers. A recent survey shows that the most common policy response in sub-Saharan African countries is reducing taxes on food while outside the region price controls or targeted consumer subsidies are the most popular measure. Sub-Saharan African countries also have a higher prevalence of food-based safety net programs which are being scaled up to respond to rising prices. The review suggests that the benefits from reducing import tariffs on staples may accrue largely to the non-poor. Social protection programs show more promise, but geographic targeting is likely to be crucial in ensuring that benefits reach the neediest. The paper also argues that anti-poverty interventions ought to retain their focus on rural areas where poverty remains highest even after taking into account the adverse impact on the urban poor due to the rise in food prices.

Download or read book Food Security and Policy Interventions in Sub Saharan Africa written by Johannes Paulus Maria Sijm and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the incidence and causes of national and household food insecurity, and analyses how policy interventions have affected food security.

Download or read book The Balance of Payments Impact of the Food and Fuel Price Shocks on Low Income African Countries written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This note discusses the implications of the price shocks for the balance of payments of low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The response by bilateral donors and multilateral institutions will, in practice, need to be country-specific. To this end, the note identifies a list of 18 countries in the region that are especially hard-hit and that consequently face a pressing need for additional balance of payments and budget support. The list reflects country circumstances and underlying assumptions as of May, and is subject to change; it is not meant to be definitive.