Impacts of climate variability and food price volatility on household income and food security of farm households in East and West Africa

This paper provides an ex-ante assessment of the impacts of climate and price variability on household income and food security in Ethiopia and Ghana. The study applies an agent-based modelling approach to highlight the role of coping and adaptation strategies under climate and price variability. Our simulation results show that climate and price variability adversely affects income and food security of households in both countries. Self-coping mechanisms are found to be important but insufficient to mitigate the adverse effects of variability, implying the need for policy interventions. Adaptation strategies composed of a portfolio of actions such as the provision of production credit and access to improved seeds are found to be effective in reducing the impacts of climate and price variability in Ethiopia. Similarly, policy interventions aimed at improving the provision of short-term production credit along with the existing irrigation facilities are important in Ghana. Finally, this study highlights the importance of capturing the distributional aspects of adaptation options by highlighting heterogeneous effects of variability and adaptation options.