Three essays on migration and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Despite global progress, food insecurity continues to be a major problem in many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. While several factors may explain this persistence, the main cause is the failure of markets characterized by unfavorable conditions for the exchange of individuals’ labor endowment. In this context, migration appears to be a solution to food insecurity insofar as individuals, in common agreement with their families, can export their labor force to a destination with better exchange conditions (employment opportunities, positive wage differences, etc.). The objective of this thesis is therefore to empirically study the impact of migration on the food security of migrant families left behind in Sub-Saharan Africa. A first macroeconomic analysis, focusing on the impact of international remittances, reveals that those remittances contribute to a decrease in the proportion of undernourished in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a further step, a second analysis, covering both international and internal migration, was carried out using survey data from two countries in sub-Saharan Africa : Ethiopia and Niger. This analysis shows that migration leads to an improvement of households’ food access and food diversification only when it produces remittances to migrant-sending households. In addition, migrants provide his or her family with insurance against food shocks. Finally, a third study on Burkina Faso indicates that migration leads to improvement of the nutritional status of children less than five years in migrant households.