Evaluating market incentive policies in Kenya with a food security and nutrition perspective: a macro-microsimulation approach

ESTEFANIA CUSTODIO; PIERRE BOULANGER; SOFÍA JIMENEZ-CALVO; EMANUELE FERRARI; MARIA PRISCILA RAMOS; ALFREDO MAINAR CAUSAPÉ

Seminario; Internal Seminar D4 JRC Seville; 2020

Kenya, such as other African countries, is particularly concerned about the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal #2: ?End hunger and malnutrition in all its forms?. Our main objective is to evaluate the impact of agricultural policy reform in Kenya on food access and food consumption. We built a macro-micro simulation model, based on a CGE model (STAGE-DEV calibrated with the SAM Kenya 2014) and run microsimulations using both the Kenya Integrated Household Budged Survey 2015/2016 and the Food Composition Table 2018. Main results suggest that better infrastructure conditions (lower transport costs and greater market access) increase overall purchasing power (pro-poor impact) and food consumption, particularly to households with higher malnutrition rates. Households with lower diet diversity improve these food security indicators when agricultural practices are assumed more productive. Results suggest a potential combination of agri-food policies in Kenya to cover most of nutrition-sensitive cases by tackling economic dimensions of food security at the household level.