Local food markets, healthy diets, and climatic shocks in Africa

Local food markets play crucial roles in promoting dietary diversity and improving nutritional outcomes in poor rural communities. Evidence on the quality of local food markets in Africa in providing these nutritious foods in the face of climatic shocks is however limited, partly due to lack of appropriate metrics to measure food market qualities in those contexts. We construct a food market quality indicator to measure the potentials of these markets and explore variations across different markets in Africa. We use longitudinal community and price data to compute the cost of recommended diets based on the EAT-Lancet reference diets and analyse spatial, agroclimatic, and temporal variations. Results highlight substantial variations across communities, and agroclimatic settings in three countries in Africa, namely Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nigeria.