Drivers of food security in West Africa: Insight from heterogeneous panel data analysis on income-level classification

This paper investigates the factors driving food security in West African countries. Specifically, it examines the impact of natural resource rents, institutional quality, and climate change on food security while controlling for industrialization and economic growth. Our research is motivated by the urgent need for swift policy action to address the escalating food crisis in the region and prevent any potential catastrophic consequences. Second-generation econometric techniques are utilized for accurate and reliable outcomes based on yearly datasets from West African countries from 2000 to 2020, and the countries are sub-grouped into low-income and lower-middle-income. The findings unveil the panel as heterogeneous and cross-sectionally based, and all the study variables are first differenced stationary and co-integrated in the long run. Hence, the Augmented Mean Group and Common Correlated Effects Mean Group estimators are utilized to explore the relationships between the variables, and the findings reveal that natural resource rents, climate change, and industrialization are detrimental to food security across the sub-groups. However, the outcomes affirm institutional quality and economic growth as beneficial drivers of food security across the sub-groups. Therefore, this study recommends that authorities of both low-income and lower-middle-income countries make substantial investments in sustainable natural resource utilization and also work towards enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of their institutions, as well as investing in environmental research to explore climate change mitigation possibilities that could enhance food security in West Africa.