The high reliance of Africa’s GDP on agriculture makes its economic growth susceptible to climate change. The vulnerability of Africa is further worsened by the strong inter-linkage that the agricultural sector has with other productive sectors. To drive policy implications that transform economic performance in Africa, it becomes important to understand the linkages between climate and economy of the region. This paper examines the effects that climate change has on economic performance in sub-Saharan African nations. Based on cross-country panel climatic data that takes account of the absorptive mechanism, it estimates the contribution of climate change to economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The estimator is developed based on the OLS, Fixed Effect, and the Arellano-Bond (1991) Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator. The findings show that high temperature is a significant contributor to worsening economic performance in the SSA region. However, after accounting for the absorptive mechanisms, the relationship is no longer that strong. Specifically, after accounting for initial economic performance, social and political stability in the 2-stage GMM estimation, the estimate for temperature drops by 59%. This result confirms the hypothesis that the negative impact of climate change in the region is not absolute, and that building an overall stable socioeconomic environment in the region could assist in buffering the impact of climate change.
Nigeria is the world’s leading producer of sorghum intended for use as food grain. Likewise, there has been growing industrial demand for sorghum in the livestock breeding and brewery sectors. As sorghum prices have been on the increase, it becomes pertinent to identify the determinants of this development in order to nip the imminent food crisis in the bud. This study relied on time series data spanning from 1970 to 2015 retrieved from FAOSTAT and World Bank databases. Analytical methods employed include the unit root test, cointegration test and error correction mechanism. The diagnostic tests indicated the presence of autocorrelation which was subsequently adjusted with the Cochrane-Orcutt procedure. Subsequent tests indicated that variables fit well to the model. As shown by the ADF unit root test, the modeled variables were non-stationary but became stationary after first differencing. At a significance level of 5%, the sorghum price was determined by gross domestic product (GDP), annual money supply, official exchange rate and crude oil price, both in the long and short run, whereas the lagged price of sorghum also had an effect on prices in the short run. The study recommends that macroeconomic variables such as GDP, annual money supply and official exchange rate be taken cognizance of when planning the agricultural development in Nigeria.
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