New University of Liverpool-led research has revealed how the combined pressures of prolonged drought and rising food and energy prices during the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war affected food security and access to clean cooking among families living in one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements.
The study, published in Discover Environment, examined the experiences of households in Mukuru informal settlement in Nairobi, during 2022, when Kenya was experiencing a severe multi-season drought alongside sharp increases in global food and fuel prices.
Led by Dr Matthew Shupler from the University of Liverpool’s Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems, the research leveraged real-time data from smart meters collected from pay-as-you-go liquefied petroleum gas (PAYG LPG) company. This data was combined with household surveys and focus group discussions.
Researchers surveyed 701 PAYG LPG customers in Mukuru and compared their cooking fuel use and payment patterns during July to October 2022 with the same period in 2021. This allowed the team to examine how households changed their cooking and dietary patterns during a period when food price inflation in Kenya exceeded 15% and the price of PAYG LPG had increased by 16%.
Families changed what they ate and how they cooked
The findings show the extent to which households were forced to adjust their everyday food and cooking choices. Three quarters (74%) reported changing the foods they cooked, skipping more meals and/or reducing their use of PAYG LPG between 2021 and 2022.
Half of households reported skipping more meals, while 63% changed the types of food they consumed and 30% reported reducing their PAYG LPG use because of higher food prices. More than half used at least two of these coping strategies.
Changes were also seen in the nutritional mix of households’ diets. Nearly half reported eating less meat and 44% ate less fish, while greater proportions reported consuming more vegetables and ugali, a staple food in Kenya.
At the same time, the smart-meter data showed a substantial change in clean cooking behaviour. Average PAYG LPG cooking time fell from 12.8 hours per month between July and October 2021 to 8.3 hours during the same period in 2022, a reduction of around 35%.
The average number of days on which households used PAYG LPG also fell from 19 to eight days per month.
Dr Matthew Shupler said: “This research illustrates the substantial downstream effect of global events, namely climate change and overseas conflict, on livelihoods of individuals living in low-income countries. We saw substantial declines in food security, and therefore nutrition due to higher food prices. In addition, use of cleaner cooking fuels was reduced, which may have implications for indoor air pollution exposures if households resorted to biomass fuels. We outline in the paper that government policies that provide safety nets are needed to protect the health of families during inflationary periods caused by climate change and conflicts”
Protecting access to clean cooking
PAYG LPG systems allow households to purchase small quantities of cooking fuel using mobile payments rather than paying the full cost of a gas cylinder refill at once. This may be particularly useful for maintaining LPG use during inflationary periods when households can have even less disposable income
Indeed, the researchers found that the flexibility of PAYG LPG appeared to help many families continue using LPG despite the economic pressures they faced. However, it was not enough to prevent a substantial fall in overall consumption as food and energy prices rose. The average amount households spent on PAYG LPG fell markedly between the two periods, while individual payments became smaller which demonstrates the vulnerability of low-income urban households when climate pressures and global economic shocks occur simultaneously.
The research contributes to the University of Liverpool’s wider work on household air pollution and clean energy access in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr Shupler is part of the University’s CLEAN-Air(Africa) programme, which works with partners across Africa to generate evidence supporting equitable access to clean household energy.
The paper, Compounding impacts of prolonged drought and onset of the Russian-Ukrainian war on food security and cleaner cooking fuel use in Nairobi, Kenya in 2022, is publicly available online.