We discuss food-consumption patterns in Central West Africa from 1961 to 2000 and some implications for combating malnutrition. The availability of food in the region improved in the 1960s, declined sharply in the 1970s and the early 1980s, and has shown a modest positive trend since the mid-1980s. Notwithstanding obvious progress over the past decades and in the region as a whole, food availability today remains below the required levels for large parts of the population and appears unstable over time, particularly in the Sahelian zone. On average, diets in this zone contain fewer than 2,200 kcal, compared with almost 2,500 kcal in the coastal zone. Conversely, protein deficiency is more common in the coastal zone, where a typical diet contains only 45 g of protein, compared with 60 g in the Sahelian zone. Furthermore, consumption is showing a dietary shift toward cereals, while yield growth lags far behind population growth. The associated import dependency and pressure on land seem to gain significance regardless of the region's agro-ecological capacity to increase and to substitute cereal imports for locally produced food. Moreover, food consumption appears responsive to income changes (calorie-income elasticity ranges from 0.25 to 0.62), while, in turn, it has a significant impact on nutritional outcomes (stunting-calorie elasticity of −1.42). We conclude that combating malnutrition requires first broad-spectrum income growth, and next specific policies that promote the yield and the contribution to diets of nutritious food produced within the region.

The study examines economies of scale and sources of total factor productivity growth on poultry farms producing table eggs in Benin Republic. We use panel data on commercial poultry farms from 2010 to 2018, and the flexible translog production functions to estimate a stochastic frontier and economies of scale. The results showed that there were significant economies of scale to be exploited, and the average productivity growth rate was decreasing of 5.09% over the study period. This deterioration was mainly because of the decline of technical efficiency growth rate (2.16%) and technology growth rate (2.67%). Although the returns to scale (1.31) were increasing, their effects on productivity during the study period were negative (−0.74%). As implications, policy makers may encourage the increasing of the “size” of poultry farms and act on the sources of productivity growth identified in this study to increase the productivity of commercial poultry farms to meet the demand of table egg in Benin.

No abstract

We discuss food-consumption patterns in Central West Africa from 1961 to 2000 and some implications for combating malnutrition. The availability of food in the region improved in the 1960s, declined sharply in the 1970s and the early 1980s, and has shown a modest positive trend since the mid-1980s. Notwithstanding obvious progress over the past decades and in the region as a whole, food availability today remains below the required levels for large parts of the population and appears unstable over time, particularly in the Sahelian zone. On average, diets in this zone contain fewer than 2,200 kcal, compared with almost 2,500 kcal in the coastal zone. Conversely, protein deficiency is more common in the coastal zone, where a typical diet contains only 45 g of protein, compared with 60 g in the Sahelian zone. Furthermore, consumption is showing a dietary shift toward cereals, while yield growth lags far behind population growth. The associated import dependency and pressure on land seem to gain significance regardless of the region's agro-ecological capacity to increase and to substitute cereal imports for locally produced food. Moreover, food consumption appears responsive to income changes (calorie-income elasticity ranges from 0.25 to 0.62), while, in turn, it has a significant impact on nutritional outcomes (stunting-calorie elasticity of -1.42). We conclude that combating malnutrition requires first broad-spectrum income growth, and next specific policies that promote the yield and the contribution to diets of nutritious food produced within the region.

Globalization-driven food trade policies and the transformations of food regimes have led to modernizing food habits and the growing substitution of traditional foods by introduced/industrialized foods in the diets of urban people in sub-Saharan Africa. Such changes in food consumption habits are suspected to be associated with the increasing prevalence of some non-transmittable food-related diseases in the region. The role food markets play in food substitution in the diets needs to be understood. This study analyzes the effects of differential market integration on the consumption of the two types of foods in Southern Benin. Market integration was assessed using the reciprocal of the gap in price instability coefficients between markets (G) and calculated using monthly prices series over the "July 2009-July 2011" period. The findings indicate that markets in the Allada market cluster are more integrated for introduced foods (G = 5.3) than traditional foods (G = 4.3). The integration of primary, assembly, and rural consumer markets with the Bohicon regional market is by far higher for introduced foods (G = 5.3) than traditional foods (G = 1.2). The results in Toffo market cluster were comparable, in spite of less reliable data. The district-level rural markets are more integrated among themselves than with the regional market, either for traditional foods or introduced foods. Considering that most of the latter are processed foods, the result tends to indicate that food processing would trigger greater market integration. Therefore, policies that promote processing and trade of locally produced traditional foods should be implemented. Indeed, processing is key among the factors that increase urban consumers' preferences for introduced foods against traditional foods. On the contrary, the hypothesis which asserts that low levels of market integration among traditional foods contribute to their disappearance in people's diets is rejected. Indeed, diets in rural areas of Benin are still dominated by "traditional foods." However, the growing trend in the consumption of imported low nutritional value foods should be controlled by appropriate food production and trade policies.