Recent Patterns of Exposure, Sensitivity, and Adaptive Capacity of Selected Crops in Cameroon

In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, precipitation is impacted by climate change. In some countries like Cameroon, it is still not clear how maize, millet and rice will respond to changes in growing season precipitation. This work examines the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of the above crops to droughts at both the national and sub-national scale. Crop yield data were culled from FAOSTAT while growing season precipitation data were culled from the database of UNDP/Oxford University and the climate portal of the World Bank. Adaptive capacity proxies (literacy, and poverty rate) were collected from KNOEMA and the African Development Bank. The analysis was performed using the vulnerability index equation. Nationally, millet has the lowest vulnerability and rice has the highest. At the sub-national scale, northern maize has the highest vulnerability followed by western highland rice. It is observed that when scales change, the crops that are vulnerable also change. However, at both levels vulnerability has an inverse relationship with adaptive capacity.

Automated summary

This study examines the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of maize, millet, and rice to droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that at the national level, millet has the lowest vulnerability while rice has the highest vulnerability, while at the sub-national scale, northern maize and western highland rice have higher vulnerability. Additionally, the study observes an inverse relationship between vulnerability and adaptive capacity at both levels.