The impact of drought on sub-saharan African economies: A preliminary examination

Abstract

Droughts, however defined,2 are frequent and severe in many African countries as a result of the extreme rainfall variability in the extensive arid and semiarid areas, and the poor soil moisture retention capacity of most African soils.3Many sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies are widely perceived as particularly vulnerable to the effects of drought as a result of the importance of rain-fed agricultural and livestock production in GDP, the limited infrastructure, and the low levels of per capita income.Moreover, parts of the Sahelian belt have been coping with an increasingly dry regime, with rainfall significantly below the norms of the period prior to the 1960s (Hulme 1992).The presence of armed conflict in several countries greatly exacerbates the effects of drought and is frequently responsible for turning drought into famine.Since the 1980s, economic decline and structural adjustment problems have also made many SSA economies potentially more vulnerable to internal and external 'shocks' (Elbadawi et al. 1992).From an economic perspective, 'agricultural drought'4 may be viewed as an exogenous, but internal, supply-side shock which is widely recognized as resulting directly in sharp reductions in agricultural production, reduced export earnings, widespread losses of assets, reductions in employment and the losses associated with declines in rural income.In addition, meteorological drought may result in hydrological conditions that impact directly on nonagricultural production including hydro-power generation and on human water supply.The combination of these direct impacts, together with indirect I This paper is part of the output from an on-going Overseas Development Institute research study on 'The impact of drought on sub-Saharan African economies and options for the mitigation of such impacts by national government and the international community', with support from ODA and the World Bank and benefitted substantially from the comments of a number of participants in seminars during 1993-94.For a fuller presentation of the arguments in this article and preliminary findings for case study countries, see Benson and Clay (1994). 2 Droughts are notoriously difficult to define and there is an extensive, literature on their definition.