Macroeconomic and climatic determinants of food security in a fragile economy: Evidence from Somalia

Abstract

This study examines the macroeconomic and climatic determinants of food security in Somalia using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework to capture both short-run dynamics and long-run relationships. Annual time-series data for the period 1990–2021 are employed, with food security proxied by the Food Production Index, and agricultural land, inflation, rainfall, and trade openness included as key explanatory variables. Unit root tests confirm a mixture of I(0) and I(1) variables, justifying the use of the ARDL bounds testing approach. The results provide moderate evidence of cointegration at the 10% significance level. In the long run, agricultural land and trade openness are found to have positive and statistically significant effects on food security, while inflation and rainfall exhibit positive but statistically insignificant relationships. Short-run results indicate that inflation and trade openness exert significant positive effects, and the error correction term is negative and highly significant, suggesting a relatively fast adjustment toward equilibrium. Robustness checks using FMOLS and DOLS confirm the stability of the positive effects of trade openness and agricultural land. These findings are broadly consistent with existing literature emphasizing the role of market integration and productive capacity in enhancing food availability in fragile economies. The study highlights the importance of strengthening agricultural resources and trade systems to improve food security outcomes in Somalia.