Is climate finance aiding food security in developing countries? : a focus on Sub-Sahara Africa

This study seeks to find out whether climate finance (CF) geared toward 35 Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) countries is assisting to achieve food security in the continent. To achieve this objective, we adopted FAO's classification of food security of 4 main dimensions: food availability, access, stability and utilization and use principal component analysis (PCA) to generate food security indexes corresponding to the different dimensions of food security. The data was analyzed using system generalized methods of moments (GMM) whereas panel quantile regression (PQR) was employed as a sensitivity analysis. Our findings show that climate finance is more useful in securing food availability but fails to enhance food access, stability and utilization. Further analysis shows that other factors such as foreign direct investment and government readiness have more impact in enhancing the different dimensions of food security whilst rural population, agricultural spending, agricultural land and capacity have more adverse effects on food security. Relevant policy implications based on our analysis are discussed. Global warming is a significant human concern. Despite minimal contributions to climate change, African countries suffer disproportionately due to limited resources for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Industrialized economies, major contributors to climate change, have committed climate funds to aid less developed nations. Our study assesses the impact of climate finance on ensuring food security in 35 Sub-Saharan African countries, crucial given the region's vulnerability to food scarcity due to climate change. Results reveal that while climate finance may promote food availability, it falls short in enhancing access, stability, and utilization. Other factors like government readiness, agricultural spending and foreign direct investment are found to be contribute to different dimensions of food security. Policy implications arising from our findings are discussed.