Modelling climate change impacts on food security in West Africa: evidence for accelerating progress toward sustainable development goal 2

Context and background  Food security rests on agricultural productivity and stable access, both increasingly jeopardized by climate change. West Africa, spanning semi-arid to humid agro-ecologies, with heavy dependence on rain-fed systems, faces heightened exposure to temperature and precipitation shocks, pests and disease range shifts, and a rising cadence of extremes that undercut yields and raise volatility. Goal and Objectives: This paper investigates how climate variability and resource pressures shape food security outcomes across 15 West African economies from 2002–2022. Methodology: The study employs panel estimators that are robust to cross-sectional dependence and heteroskedasticity, Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) and a Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel non-Granger framework. Results: Results indicate that adverse climate conditions altered precipitation, carbon-intensity, and natural resource depletion, depress food security, while agricultural employment, productivity, and economic growth bolster it. Population pressure remains a binding headwind. We document substantive cross-country interdependence: shocks to food security in several economies propagate non-trivially across borders. Policy priorities include climate-smart agriculture, resilient water and transport infrastructure, regional risk-sharing and trade facilitation, and productivity-oriented diversification. These measures are essential to channel the region’s trajectory back toward achieving SDG 2.