Title: Improving the Resilience of African Countries to Food Shocks
Presenter: Roland Maio
 
Most African countries are poorly positioned to deal with unanticipated shocks to the global food system. To mitigate 
vulnerabilities to this systemic risk, a new perspective on food security is needed that both supports diverse trade 
relationships for staple foods and promotes some degree of self sufficiency in domestic food production throughout 
Africa. Here we use an agent-based network model of the global food system to explore the sensitivity of African 
countries to short-term production shocks in the global food system. We examine the global cereals trade network for 
two periods, 1996-2000 and 2006-2010. Our results reveal two trends in African food security: an intensifying 
dependence on imported cereals complemented by a decline in intra-African trade. We find that maintaining stable 
intra-African trade links is a critical and effective strategy for absorbing and mitigating food-supply disruptions. 
Although intra-African trade represents 5.41% and 4.06% of African trade in the 1996-2000 and 2006-2010 time 
periods respectively, maintaining intra-African trade links reduces individual African countries exposure to supply 
shocks by 26.27% and 19.87% and to consumption shocks by 22.44% and 13.46%.