The Paradigm of Governance Quality, Migration and its Implication on Food and Nutritional Security in Sub- Saharan Africa: What does Dynamic Generalized Method of Moments estimation reveal?

Using panel data sourced from World Development Indicators, FAOSTAT and World Governance Indicators covering 15 countries from 1996-2015, we employ both the dynamic (System and difference generalized method of moments-GMM) and static (OLS, random effects, fixed effects) models to investigates the growth effects of African migration proxy as remittance and quality of governance on food and nutritional security in SSA. The empirical results from both models show that an increase in remittances and combined index of quality of governance in SSA contributes positively and significantly to all measures of food security vis-a-vis nutritional security considered in the study. In specific, the rule of law, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, political instability, and voice and accountability were found to influence the food security of SSA. However, the control over corruption has more impact on food security in the continent compared to other indicators. Accordingly, we contend that policies geared towards increasing government investment on curbing corruption which has been circumventing livelihood outcomes such as food and nutritional security over the years would likely raise economic growth and subsequently food and nutritional security levels in the region.