Food insecurity remains a serious challenge for many households in Africa and the situation is even more prevalent among young people. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on youth food security status in Africa. We assessed the level and determinants of food security among young farmers in Africa. We adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select 400, 429, and 606 young farmers in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, respectively. Individual food consumption was assessed following a 7 days recall method. The Food Consumption Score, which combines dietary diversity and consumption frequency was used to assess food security status while the determinants of food security were identified using a logistic regression model. Results suggest low dietary diversity across the three countries. Also, the majority of the respondents had an unacceptable food consumption score, suggesting that despite being food producers, young farmers are still food insecure. The odds of being food secure was positively determined by access to extension services, participation in the ENABLE TAAT business incubation programme, and access to market information but, negatively by access to credit, number of employees, Covid-19 pandemic, and location. Additionally, the food security status of young female farmers was positively influenced by age, suggesting that younger youths are less food secure compared to older ones. These results suggest that more efforts should be directed towards improving the food security of young African farmers and that policy- and programme-level interventions should support access to extension services, market information, and land. Additionally, more investments should be directed towards developing need-based agribusiness incubation programmes with an effort to scale existing programmes beyond the regular one-time period.

Despite the abundant deposit of gas resources in Nigeria, a large proportion of the country’s population still depend on traditional fuels such as firewood for cooking. This study investigates the determinants of households’ fuel choice in urban Nigeria. This study made use of primary data which were collected through administration of questionnaires in twelve states spread across six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The cooking fuels examined are firewood, kerosene, LPG, and electricity. Multinomial logit model was used to estimate the determinants of fuel choices. The results showed that income, age of the wife, education level of the wife, and household size were important factors that determine cooking fuel choices across the country. The paper concludes that efforts should be aimed at making clean cooking fuels especially LPG affordable and available for urban households.

The study investigates the effect of capital inflows and institutional quality on economic growth in eight oil exporting African countries using FGLS and AMG methods to analyse the data spanning from 1996 to 2020. It was observed that foreign direct investment, external debt and official development assistance present no significant influence on economic growth. Institutional quality has a positive and significant influence on economic growth. When institutional quality was interacted with the various capital inflows, it only had influence on external debt as the interaction between institutional quality and external debt revealed a significant effect but did not spur economic growth. The study therefore concluded that capital inflows have no effect on economic growth. Consequently, the study recommends that, for oil exporting African countries to reduce the risks and uncertainties inherent with foreign direct investment, good institutions must be set up and made to work, long-term economic growth and fiscal and debt sustainability must be emphasized, and finally, aid should be provided based on achieved policy levels rather than promises of improvement in order to boost foreign aid effectiveness.