Investigating the effects of economic sanctions on food production in target countries: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the most sanctioned region in the world, and also the most food insecure. Empirical evidence have emerged showing the linkage between sanctions and food insecurity. The imposition of sanctions have also been shown to reduce food imports of target states. Given the peculiarity of SSA in terms of its reliance on food imports, local food production is critical for food security especially under conditions of sanctions. On the back of this, and motivated by recent findings that show inconclusive effects of sanctions on food production levels in target countries, we investigated the determinants of food production in SSA as well as the impacts of economic sanctions on food production levels in SSA as measured by the Food Production Index (FPI). We used fixed effects estimation with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors to estimate data of 36 countries from SSA, spanning the period 1990-2022. Our findings show that the economic environment is a key determinant of food production in SSA, and trade and financial sanctions have negative and significant effects on food production. We observed a reduction in FPI by on average 4.7 points (5.75%) at the 5% level of significance. Employing a two-stage instrumental variable approach, we identify GDP per capita, inflation, and exchange rate fluctuations as the channels through which economic sanctions exerts its negative in-fluence on food production in SSA. We therefore contribute to the growing strand of literature that investigates the secondary effects of the imposition of economic sanctions, by providing empirical evidence of how sanctions undermine food production in SSA where food security crises is already under constraints of climate change and economic shocks.