Niamey, the capital of Niger, is particularly prone to floods, since it is on the banks of the Niger River, which in its middle basin has two flood peaks: one in summer (the red flood) and one in winter (the black flood). In 2020, the Niger River in Niamey reached its all-time highest levels following an abundant rainy season. On the other hand, the floods in Niamey have been particularly frequent in the last decade, a symptom of a change in hydroclimatic behaviour already observed since the end of the great droughts of the 1970s and 1980s and which is identified with the name of Sahelian Paradox. This study, starting from the analysis of the 2020 flood and from the update of the rating curve of the Niamey hydrometric station, analyses the rainfall–runoff relationship on the Sahelian basins of the Medium Niger River Basin (MNRB) that are at the origin of the local flood. The comparative analysis of runoffs, annual maximum flows (AMAX) and runoff coefficients with various rainfall indices calculated on gridded datasets allowed to hydroclimatically characterise the last decade as a different period from the wet one before the drought, the dry one and the post-drought one. Compared to the last one, the current period is characterised by a sustained increase in hydrological indicators (AMAX +27%) consistent with the increase in both the accumulation of precipitation (+11%) and the number (+51%) and magnitude (+54%) of extreme events in the MNRB. Furthermore, a greater concentration of rainfall and extremes (+78%) in August contributes to reinforcing the red flood’s positive anomalies (+2.23 st.dev in 2020). The study indicates that under these conditions the frequency of extreme hydrological events in Niamey will tend to increase further also because of the concurrence of drivers such as river-bed silting and levee effects. Consequently, the study concludes with the need for a comprehensive flood-risk assessment on the Niamey city that considers both recent hydroclimatic trends and urbanisation dynamics in flood zones hence defining the most appropriate risk-reduction strategies.

Using the panel survey for the Kagera region of Tanzania, we select children who were seven to 15 years old in the 1990s and follow up with them in the first decade of the 2000s to study the consequences of child labour on their status in employment in adulthood. We estimate fixed effects linear probability models. We find that child labour is associated with vulnerable employment and that this result is driven by girls. Age plays a crucial role in the determination of the sign of the child labour effect. On average, for children younger than 10 child labour has only negative effects. The negative effects of domestic chores are quite large: the probability of vulnerable employment increases considerably for girls under 13, up to 20 percentage points for 10-year-olds. Child labour on the household farm has even more adverse effects. Overall, these findings highlight the important role of child labour in the determination of the gender gap in employment.

Agrometeorological services, as part of weather and climate services, are expected to play a key role in supporting sub-Saharan agriculture facing climate change and variability. In the Sahel, smallholder farmers relying on rainfed crop production systems are particularly vulnerable to climate change and variability because of low resilience and coping capacity. The provision of agrometeorological services is growing across Africa, but they often remain inaccessible for the majority of smallholder farmers or are not very relevant to support on-the-ground decision-making. Our work aims to demonstrate the hypothesis that agrometeorological services can effectively improve agricultural productivity and sustainability provided that appropriate mechanisms are put in place to ensure access, uptake and action. The paper illustrates the case study of Burkina Faso, where the National Meteorological Service, with the support of the World Meteorological Organization, engaged in the provision of accessible, reliable and relevant agrometeorological services for farmers. The study demonstrates that farmers, even in remote rural areas, are willing to profit from weather and climate services for strategic and tactical decisions in agricultural management because of relevant economic benefit. These benefits can be summarized as a 40% reduction in production costs and a 41% increase in income. Results also highlight environmental positive impacts such as the reduction by 50% in the use of fertilizers. Nevertheless, the study concludes that in order to scale-up weather and climate services in West Africa, a new business model released from the development projects approach should be explored.

The Covid-19 outbreak has negatively affected the agri-food system especially in developing countries where most people rely on agriculture. Using primary data, we study the role of staple crop production as a coping strategy during the Covid-19 outbreak. Using a linear probability model, this article assesses the effect of income and food security deterioration perceived as a consequence of Covid-19 on rice investment propensity among 1320 women rice producers in Casamance, Senegal. Our results show that food security deterioration and especially income reduction due to Covid-19 are significantly and positively related to rice investment propensity. The presence of food retailers and the type of household livelihood, farm or nonfarm, dramatically drive the Covid-19 perception effects on rice investment propensity. While women small producers in villages with food retailers slightly increase their propensity to invest in rice, in remote villages lacking food retailers rice production represents an effective coping strategy for those women living in households that depend to a large extent on the market, i.e. those relying on nonfarm income. These results are supported by the strong correlation between limited physical access to the market, due to movement restrictions, and rice investment propensity, especially among households relying on nonfarm income.

The dataset contains the answers of smallholder farmers to a semi-structured field survey and the 2020 yield plot measurements conducted in 8 municipalities of the Dosso and Tillabéri regions in Niger. It is a systematic sampling of about 320 questionnaires and 192 yield plot samples equally distributed in eight municipalities of intervention. The dataset contains several pieces of information about the uptake and the impacts of a tailored climate service (CS) produced by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) and disseminated through a network that involves Ministry of Agriculture extension services at the municipal level developed in the context of the AdaptatioN Au changement Climatique, prévention des catastrophes et Développement agrIcole pour la sécurité Alimentaire du Niger (ANADIA) Project. The material gathered by the survey gives a picture of the preferences of local farmers in the broadcasting of climate services information and their consequent strategical and tactical decisions in farm practices. Moreover, the survey investigates the preferences regarding the information that farmers would like to receive during the cropping season. Furthermore, the measurement of yield and its relation to the farmers’ access to climate information and participation in training initiatives gives an indication of the impact of the CS on agricultural production in these regions.

Current times are characterized by unprecedented migration levels: millions of people are on the move worldwide. Thus, understanding why people decide to migrate is a major goal of policymakers and international organizations, and migration has become a prominent issue on the global research agenda. Traditional migration drivers can be divided into reasons to leave (‘push’ factors) and reasons to migrate (‘pull’ factors), and include income deprivation, dissatisfaction with public services and institutions in the home country, conflict and war, climate change, and social networks abroad. In this paper, we focus our attention on children’s well-being as a potential migration driver. We investigate it by using the Gallup World Poll, a repeated cross-section dataset of a survey conducted in more than 150 countries from 2006 to 2016. We estimate the association between planned and intended migration and children’s perceived well-being using logit models with standardized coefficients, robust standard errors, and year and country fixed effects. Estimates reveal a positive and statistically significant association between child-related concerns, migration intent and plans. In particular, the probability of individuals having migration intent and plans increases where they report lower levels of satisfaction with child-related issues, as measured by the Youth Development Index, an index driven by indicators of respect for children and satisfaction with the education system. Moreover, children’s well-being affects more individuals living in households with children than those without. Finally, migration is a child- and youth-related phenomenon: young individuals would like to migrate, and plan to do so, more than older individuals.