The Food Crisis and its Impacts on Poverty in Senegal and Mali: Crossed Destinies

In this paper we use a CGE macro-micro modelling approach to analyse the distributional impact of the food crisis and to examine a couple of policy responses in two neighbouring West African countries. Both countries are strongly dependent on agriculture; both have similar climates and share many other features. However, the approach we use captures structural differences at both the macro level and the micro level for household income and expenditure structures. Our results reveal surprising and significant differences for poverty impact at the national and sub-group levels, as well as for inequality and pro-poor analysis. These differences are present for the world price increase of agricultural goods as well as policy responses to the food crisis. Our results highlight the importance of country-specific analysis and the risk of extrapolating conclusions from one country to another.