Enabling Environment and Agriculture in ECOWAS: Implications for Food Security

Amechi Endurance Igharo,Oluwatoyin A. Matthew,Romanus Osabohien,Isaiah O. Olurinola

doi:10.37394/232015.2021.17.4

Abstract

This study examined how enabling environment (proxied by political stability and absence of violence) affect agricultural production and food security in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region. The essence of this study is to ensure that a conducive enabling environment is put in place to boost agriculture, so as to ensure food security in ECOWAS sub-region. The study employed the fixed and random effects econometric method on the data sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for the period 2000 to 2018. The findings from the study showed that, when there is an enabling environment for farming, agriculture production increased by 1%, while food security increased by about 3%.These findings imply that proper policies and programmes should be put in place towards ensuring an enabling environment for agricultural activities which will increase production and food security within the ECOWAS sub-region.

Highlights

The enabling environment - political stability, peace and absence of violence in a system can have a significant effect on the viability and productivity of such a system [1],[2],[3],[4]
EENV represents enabling environment proxied by political stability and absence of violence which is the key independent variable, AEMP represents agricultural employment (% of total employment) ELECT represents access to electricity (% total population), and POPGR represents the growth rate of population, i represents entities which are the 15 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries included in the study which are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo)
The motivation for this study stems from the fact that there is need to provide an adequate enabling environment in order to boost agriculture so as to ensure food security in Nigeria

Summary

Introduction

The enabling environment - political stability, peace and absence of violence in a system can have a significant effect on the viability and productivity of such a system [1],[2],[3],[4]. The agricultural system is not an exception, as enabling environment significantly impact on the viability and productivity of the agricultural system which affects food security in return [5]. Absence of peace, unstable policies and regulations can derail even the best business plans, leading to losses and setbacks, the scaling back of agricultural investment thereby leading to low production and food insecurity [5]. Agricultural activities will be disrupted which will negatively affect production and in turn, food system. Farmer-herder conflict and communal conflict in most West African countries, especially the Northern part of Nigeria has led to displacement, infrastructural damages amongst others, and has greatly constrained access to farming land and harvest losses [5]. Most of the households affected by conflicts lost their livelihoods and are mainly dependent on humanitarian assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [5]

Methods

Results

Conclusion