The Trilemma of Government Effectiveness, Climate Change, and Food Security: Empirical Evidence from Africa

It has become indisputable that Africa’s tremendous natural resource potential has not translated into the eradication of its various underdevelopment pathogens. Like other pathogens, food insecurity, while exacerbated by climate change, is also influenced by governance issues. This study, therefore, investigates the direct and indirect effects of government effectiveness on food security through climate change. The study employed the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDIs), spanning from 1995 to 2023, and used a pooled mean group estimator of the autoregressive distributed lag (PMG-ARDL) model. The direct effects of government effectiveness and greenhouse gas emissions on food security are counterintuitive, but the moderating role of government effectiveness yields positive effects in the long run. Control variables such as precipitation and agricultural land size show significant positive effects in the long run. Sub-regional sample results were also obtained, showing minor differences from the full sample model, notably that the impact of trade on food security in North and Central Africa was positive. The study provides various policy implications, including a commitment to climate-resilient policies to sustain and alleviate food insecurity, as well as the need to design insulation mechanisms within long-term policy frameworks against possible short-term political shocks.