Chad

Unique datasets on shocks, food security, and household coping strategies: Creating new analytical playgrounds to study coping behavior in the multi-shock environments of Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso (2018-2023)

To inform the Cadre Harmonisé process in West Africa, large-scale national household surveys are usually implemented twice a year to capture data on household food security and several forms of consumption- and livelihood-based coping strategies. These cross-sectional surveys typically take place around February-March (before the start of the lean season) and September-October (at the end of the lean season or beginning of the harvesting period), and they are generally representative at the second-tier administrative level. Despite their different names (that is, ENSAN in Mali, ENSA in Chad, EVIAM in Niger, and ENISAN in Burkina Faso) and the methodological revisions introduced over the years, these surveys have a large common set of variables that were pooled together by standardizing the modalities of all common variables found across the multiple survey waves between 2018 and 2023. Apart from reconsolidation and reprocessing of initial data files, this process also involved the re-computation of several key indicators on food security and household coping as to assure maximum methodological consistency over time.

Climate change and food security in Africa’s drylands

How did households in Chad cope with covariate shocks between 2018 and 2023? Exploration of a unique dataset

The objective of this analysis is to gain more insight into the coping behavior of households in Chad when facing covariate shocks and stressors of different kinds. To achieve this, we rely on a unique dataset, which consists of eleven waves of cross-sectional household data combined with an extensive list of shock indicators compiled from external sources. Apart from a detailed profiling of both dimensions, this analysis relies on a data mining algorithm to uncover interesting associations between covariate shocks and coping strategies. Among the main findings of this study is the pronounced diversity in shock and coping profiles observed across time and place, which in turn complicates any straightforward identification of common and consistent patterns in household coping behavior. This said, political violence has increased until 2022 and then fell back; food prices hiked in 2022 and 2023; rainy seasons were underperforming in 2021 and 2023; extreme weather events reached a peak in 2022; while four departments in 2023 suffered from four distinct shock domains at the same time. While coping prevalence and coping intensity are roughly aligned over time, they are only weakly correlated in geographical terms in 2023. Further, the biggest change in people’s coping behavior involves keeping children from school when confronted with severe political violence coupled with severe climate change and light seasonal performance shocks – while many distinct combinations apply for different subpopulations. Finally, this analysis also very much reveals the need for additional research on the same integrated and enhanced dataset.