The Impacts of Disasters on African Agriculture
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World Bank, Washington, DC
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Disasters affect millions of people
each year and cause economic losses worth many billions of
dollars globally. Reporting on disaster impacts in research,
policy, and news primarily relies on macro statistics based
on disaster inventories. The macro statistics suggest that a
relatively small share of disaster damages accrues in
Africa. This paper, instead, uses detailed survey micro-data
from six African countries to quantify disaster damages in
one key sector: crop agriculture. The micro-data reveals
much higher damages and more people affected than the macro
statistics would indicate. On average, 36 percent of the
agricultural plots in the sample suffer crop losses due to
adverse climatic events. In the countries and time period
analyzed, these losses reduced total crop production by an
average of 29 percent. Importantly, many of these losses are
underreported or undetected in key disaster inventories and
therefore elude macro statistics. In the case of droughts
and floods, the economic losses recorded in the micro-data
are $5.1 billion higher than in the macro statistics,
affecting 145 million to 170 million people, more than four
times as many as the macro statistics suggest. The
difference stems mostly from smaller and less severe but
frequent adverse events that are not recorded in disaster inventories.
Palabras clave
AGRICULTURE, CLIMATE CHANGE, DISASTER RISK, AFRICA, LOSS AND DAMAGE