Links between energy access and food security in sub Saharan Africa: an exploratory review

Abstract

Three quarters of the population in Sub Saharan Africa lacks access to modern energy, and relies instead on biomass fuels for cooking and heating. The environment and health implications of the use of biomass fuel has been widely documented in the literature, and has raised the topic of energy access in various policy and development arenas. Still, the impact of energy access on food security at the household level has not been explored in detail; consequently the two sectoral policies remain unaligned. Our aims for this review were to document how lack of access to energy can impact on food security through influence on dietary choices and cooking practices; and how reallocation of household resources from food to energy procurement causes a switch to biomass energy forms of lower grade. We searched the literature for published peer-reviewed articles available through major online publication databases, initially identifying 132 articles but finally reviewing a set of 19 that met our criteria. While most studies suggested that fuelwood scarcity can affect food security through three hypothesised pathways, very few of them provided empirical data to support this argument. Overall, the review found coping measures for woodfuel scarcity to be highly contextual and influenced by geography, household economy and labour availability. Due to the limited number of studies with detailed data, it was not possible to perform a comparative analysis that could support or refute a hypothesis that lack of access to energy can impact on food security. More rigorous studies on this topic are needed which could provide evidence for policy action.

Connecting the sustainable development goals by their energy inter-linkages

“…We initially located synthesis papers, by way of expert judgement and Web searches, focusing on different SDG-related dimensions (both from the academic and gray literature) that had already undertaken substantive reviews on particular topics and could therefore be used as guides for deeper investigation of the evidence (e.g. Aether 2016, Aranda et al , Bhattacharyya 2013, Cook 2011, Pueyo et al 2013, Raji et al 2015, Saunders et al 2013, Shaw et al 2014, Sola et al 2016, WBGU 2013). These papers may or not have used the specific language of the SDGs within their text-in fact prior to 2015, this language did not even exist.…”

Fuelwood scarcity and its adaptation measures: an assessment of coping strategies applied by small-scale farmers in Dodoma region, Tanzania

“…Review of coping strategies from literature In a first step, we identify coping strategies that households in rural areas apply to cope with fuelwood scarcity in the literature. The review articles by Brouwer et al (1989) and Sola et al (2016) on energy access, food security, and nutritional impacts provide the baseline for this review. Additional literature is identified using the bibliographic databases Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar.…”

“…The findings of this research show the multidimensional impact of fuelwood availability on rural livelihoods. The scarcity of fuelwood negatively affects food and nutrition security, soil fertility, and labor availability (Sola et al 2016). Only 9% of the identified coping strategies at the CSS can be considered as preventive.…”

Deforestation, Climate Change and Food Security Nexus in Sub-Sahara Africa: Content Analysis

“…Researchers [30] stressed the fact that food requires to be properly cooked before it is safe and palatable for human consumption, thus, therefore, deforestation presents a lack thereof energy conflicting the guarantee of food security. Ultimately, this is evident for SSA, where a quarter of the population is undernourished, mainly resulting from the limited supply of energy [30].…”

“…However, this said, this study [14] deliberately stressed the value of forests as a reliable food insecurity source being the most productive yet easily accessible resources available to rural Cameroonians.Deforestation, which is coined by the destruction of forest cover to avail land purposely for nonforest use, primarily for agriculture is an immediate trend in SSA countries. More so, in most of SSA, the popularized practice deriving from deforestation is subsistence agriculture with an annual deforestation rate of 0.7% [30]. More studies [13][14] indicate that Africa Total natural forest cover in SSA declined by 9.5% between 2000 and 2010, of which over 75% was converted into agricultural farmland.…”