Credit, gender, and food security: Empirical evidence of determinants to access, affordability, and consumption in Cameroon

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• Author: Emmanuel Kyeremateng,Ernest L. Molua,Stephanie M. E. Mvodo,Francis E. Ndip
• Date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wfp2.12069

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Credit, gender, and food security: Empirical

evidence of determinants to access,

affordability, and consumption in Cameroon

Emmanuel Kyeremateng

1

| Ernest L. Molua

1,2

|

Stephanie M. E. Mvodo

1

| Francis E. Ndip

2,3

1

Department of Agricultural Economics

and Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture

and Veterinary Medicine, University of

Buea, Buea, Cameroon

2

Centre for Independent Development

Research, Buea, Cameroon

3

Center for Development Research,

University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Correspondence

Francis E. Ndip, Center for Development

Research, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.

Email: ebaifrancis1@gmail.com

Funding information

We acknowledge the FRAME (Fostering

Research and Intra-African Knowledge

Transfer through Mobility and

Education) program under the Intra-

Africa Academic Mobility Scheme of the

European Union’s Youth Mobility for

Africa flagship initiative, for funding the

graduate studies and field research of

Emmanuel Kyeremateng. We thank

Joyce B. Endeley the FRAME Project

Coordinator and all the faculty members

of the Department of Agricultural

Economics and Agribusiness, University

of Buea, Cameroon for providing working

facilities and also for continuous

encouragement during this research. We

thank Joan M. Etutu-Molua for

administrative and logistical assistance

for the research.

Abstract

Despite receiving considerable attention, food insecurity

remains a salient issue, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Among other factors, limited access to credit is one of

the direct drivers of food insecurity. Hence, interven-

tions such as credit, which improve household income,

may be important in improvingfood security. While pre-

vious studies have evaluated the effects of credit on food

security, the evidence is mixed. Moreover, neither the

effect of the amount of credit nor the gender aspects

have been adequately considered. In this paper, we eval-

uate the role of credit access on household food security.

Beyond credit access, we also considered the amount of

credit. Using cross-sectional data from two unique

regions of Cameroon, we estimated using ordered probit

models, and to gain more insights, we performed a

gender-disaggregated analysis. Our results suggest that

both formal credit access and the amount of credit are

positively associated with the food security status of the

household. However, informal credit access does not

affect food security. The effects of credit are influenced

by the gender of the household head as shown by our

gender-disaggregated results. We therefore recommend

Received: 21 January 2024 Revised: 1 April 2024 Accepted: 3 April 2024

DOI: 10.1002/wfp2.12069

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distrib ution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2024 The Authors. World Food Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.

48 World Food Policy. 2024;10:48–85.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wfp2

that policies that constraint households’access to formal

credit should be relaxed.

KEYWORDS

Credit access, food security, gender, ordered probit, Cameroon

1|INTRODUCTION

Food security at all levels and dimensions is being threatened (FAO et al., 2023). Yet, food is

essential for everyone (Cafiero et al., 2018). Besides its intrinsic value, which makes it necessary

for survival, it also has instrumental value related to health and development. According to

Jones et al. (2013), a food-secure population is necessary for economic growth. Food security is

“when all people always have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutri-

tious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”

(McGuire, 2015). Food security at the household level is highly reliant on four interconnected

pillars; availability, stability, accessibility, and utilization of food preferences (FAO, 2008). Food

availability indicates household self-sufficiency (Nicholson et al., 2021). Food accessibility is the

household’s economic and physical availability of healthy food in sufficient quantities to meet

nutritional needs (Kehinde & Kehinde, 2020). This suggests that food access is highly linked to

income. Hence, poorer households may have less food access due to poor purchasing power

(Jones et al., 2013). This shows that food insecurity can be reduced through physical and eco-

nomic access to food (FAO, 2010). Food utilization is eating nutritious food that meets house-

hold macro and micronutrient needs (Nicholson et al., 2021). Food stability connects the first

three dimensions of food security—availability, access, and utilization (Pangaribowo

et al., 2013). These pillars which are interconnected in space (local, regional, national and inter-

national) and time (short, medium and long term) have occupied centre stage in policy pro-

cesses of food security .

Food security as a policy imperative has received considerable attention in the international

development agenda. Since an emerging food crisis was highlighted at the 1974 World Food

Conference in Rome (Jones et al., 2013), other development agendas such as the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have explicitly consid-

ered food security as a priority goal. Despite these commitments, food security remains a

bedeviling issue. Global food insecurity rose by approximately 10% in 2022 (FAO et al., 2022).

The World Bank (2022) reports that one in five people are hungry. Beyond hunger, 2.37 billion

people lacked appropriate food in 2020 (FAO, 2021).

Food insecurity remains varied by geography, country, socioeconomic group, and time

(Bashir et al., 2012 ). Sub-Saharan Africa has over 94% of Africa’s hungry population, com-

pared to East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America. Africa had a 282 million hungry popula-

tion in 2022, up by 89.1 million in 6 years (FAO, 2021). The rate of hunger in Africa

continues to rise. Of the 282 million people in need of food, 18 million and 7 million live in

Northern and Southern Africa, respectively (FAO, 2021). East Africa has 125 million hungry

people, 44% of 282 million. Food insecurity affects 27% of West Africans, 77 million. Central

Africa’s 57 million food-insecure people make up 20%.

KYEREMATENG ET AL.49

Among other factors exacerbating food insecurity are factors such as limited access to

improved seeds, machinery, and capital (Jones et al., 2013;Qaim,2020), as well as the triple

whammies of conflict, climate change, and COVID-19 (FAO et al., 2022) and income poverty

(Andrianarison,2022). Poverty is argued to be one of the most important drivers of foodinsecurity

(Andrianarison, 2022; Mahadevan & Hoang, 2016). It limits not only availability but also accessi-

bility and utilization of food. Households have generally relied on their own production for their

food security (Sibhatu et al., 2015;Sibhatu&Qaim,2017). However, recent evidence points to an

increasing role of markets (Koppmair et al., 2017; Ogutu et al., 2020). This increasing role of the

market bolsters the role of income in food security. Accordingly, interventions such as credit

access that improve the income of households may affect food security either directly or indirectly

(Salima et al., 2023; Chegini et al., 2021; Silvestri et al., 2015; Bashir and Schilizzi, 2013).

In this paper, we evaluate the role of credit on food security. Although a large body of litera-

ture on the links between credit and food security exists, the empirical evidence is at best mixed

with both positive and negative effects (Bidisha et al., 2017;Bocheretal.,2017;Boltana

et al., 2023; Diagne & Zeller, 2001; Kehinde & Kehinde, 2020;Salimaetal.,2023). This thus sug-

gests that the context in which sucha relationship is studied matters. This study therefore contrib-

utes to this literature in various ways. Firstly, we consider the effects of both formal and informal

credit. Most studies have ignored the type of credit.

1

Because formal and informal credit may

serve different purposes based on household preferences, their effects on food security may differ.

The type and nature of credit have been shown to matter for other welfare indicators

(Chhorn, 2021; Imai & Azam,2012). While other studies use credit access as a dummy, it may not

reveal the full effects of credit. While we measured credit access as a dummy, we also considered

the amount of creditreceived, which allowed us to perform an intensive margins analysis.

Secondly, we focus particularly on Cameroon, an archetypical developing country where

the literature on credit and food security is very sparse. Previous studies on credit access in

Cameroon have been much focused on farm productivity (Ndaghu et al., 2023; Djoumessi

et al., 2018; Chenaa et al., 2018) and poverty (Buchenrieder et al., 2019; Kimengsi et al., 2020).

With the proliferation of formal and informal credit sources, it would be interesting to under-

stand how much credit affects food security. Moreover, amidst COVID-19 and other exogenous

factors, food insecurity in Cameroon has spiked (Shillie et al., 2023). As a matter of governance,

understanding the role of credit may offer new policy avenues to combat food insecurity. Given

that there are regional differences in food insecurity as well as credit markets, it would also be

worthwhile to understand the broader impacts of credit. To this end, we used data from two dis-

tinct regions of Cameroon with different food insecurity situations. Lastly, weperformed a het-

erogeneity analysis base on the gender of the household head.

From the gender-disaggregated statistical estimations, we show a positive relationship between

the levels of formal credit access and the amount of credit available to households, and their level

of food security. We establish that having access to informal financing, on the other hand, does not

have any impact on the security of staple-food supplies. Overall, the impacts of credit are

influenced by the gender of the person who is the head of the family. The robustness check con-

firms that the gender of the household head may influence the effects of credit on food security,

since the gender of the household may be critical in resource access, decision-making, and a buffer

against food consumption shortfalls (Larson et al., 2019;Lutomiaetal.,2019; Silva et al., 2023). We

1

The study by Salima et al. (2023) considers both formal and informal credit in their analysis. Their findings suggest that

informal credit worsens food security. Moreover, they argue that the context matters. However, they fail to consider the

amount of credit.

50 KYEREMATENG ET AL.