christaingabire/PricePulse

Unifying and visualizing 18 years of food price data across six African countries to reveal regional trends and market volatility # PricePulse I built PricePulse to explore how food prices behave across African countries, and what those movements reveal about regional trade, agriculture, and food security. This started as a small data-cleaning exercise and quickly became an attempt to make cross-country price data actually comparable and meaningful. I realized how little accessible, standardized food price data existed, even for major staples like maize or rice that millions rely on every day --- ## What This Project Does PricePulse takes messy, country-specific food price data and transforms it into something you can analyze across borders. It allows users to compare trends, track volatility, and visualize how food markets differ across the continent The system currently covers: - 6 countries: Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, and Somalia - 404 markets: from rural trading posts to major urban centers - 36,000+ price observations (2007–2025) - 5 regions: East Africa, West Africa, Sahel, Southern Africa, and the Horn of Africa Key commodities include maize, rice, millet, and sorghum, as well as region-specific foods. Some are shared across countries, which makes it possible to compare them directly --- ## Why It Matters Food price data isn’t just about economics; It reflects climate shocks, political stability, and trade systems. By cleaning and unifying this information, we can start answering questions like: - Why do prices move together across borders in some years, but not others? - Which markets are most volatile? - How are global events (like COVID-19 or the 2022 food crisis) visible in local markets? --- ## How It Works This project uses a modular Python setup that allows each country’s data to be cleaned separately, then merged into a single unified dataset Main components: - processing/: Country-specific cleaners for different formats - multi_country/: Unified processor that merges and reshapes data - dashboard/: Interactive Streamlit dashboard for explo …