Three quarters of the population in Sub Saharan Africa lacks access to modern energy, and relies instead on biomass fuels for cooking and heating. The environment and health implications of the use of biomass fuel has been widely documented in the literature, and has raised the topic of energy access in various policy and development arenas. Still, the impact of energy access on food security at the household level has not been explored in detail; consequently the two sectoral policies remain unaligned. Our aims for this review were to document how lack of access to energy can impact on food security through influence on dietary choices and cooking practices; and how reallocation of household resources from food to energy procurement causes a switch to biomass energy forms of lower grade. We searched the literature for published peer-reviewed articles available through major online publication databases, initially identifying 132 articles but finally reviewing a set of 19 that met our criteria. While most studies suggested that fuelwood scarcity can affect food security through three hypothesised pathways, very few of them provided empirical data to support this argument. Overall, the review found coping measures for woodfuel scarcity to be highly contextual and influenced by geography, household economy and labour availability. Due to the limited number of studies with detailed data, it was not possible to perform a comparative analysis that could support or refute a hypothesis that lack of access to energy can impact on food security. More rigorous studies on this topic are needed which could provide evidence for policy action.

Background: In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the production and use of woodfuel remains an important socio-economic activity with more than 70% of the population relying on woodfuel as their primary household energy source. Despite their socio-economic significance, woodfuel value chains are often viewed negatively due to their association with detrimental health and environmental impacts. However, the lack of sound evidence and limited understanding of the role of contextual factors in influencing the various impacts of woodfuel value chains have prevented the formulation of properly guided policy interventions. Thus the objective of this systematic map is to provide a comprehensive review of the environmental, socio-economic, and health impacts of woodfuel value chains across SSA. Methods: The search strategy for this review map was defined in a peer-reviewed protocol and refined by iterative testing. Search strings were composed of population, intervention, and location terms and combined using Boolean operators. The bibliographic databases Web of Science, Scopus, and CAB Abstracts were used as the main sources of literature for this review, and a total of 4728 results were initially retrieved. Following title and abstract screening, 659 entered full text screening. Critical appraisal of 219 articles led to the exclusion of studies that did not set meet quality criteria for this map, resulting in a final total of 131 articles for inclusion in data extraction and analysis. Results: From the 131 included articles, 152 individual studies were identified during data extraction. Studies came from 26 of the 49 Sub Saharan African countries, with a particular preponderance of articles published in the last 10 years. Critical appraisal found significant weaknesses in the experimental design of woodfuel value chain studies with the exception of health impact studies, which frequently utilized controls or other relevant comparators. Findings suggest that woodfuel value chains have environmental, socioeconomic and health consequences with the frequent presence of trade-offs. The reporting of contextual factors in the studies challenge the widespread perception of deforestation as being directly caused by bush fires, overgrazing and woodcutting. Instead, agricultural expansion (which often includes forest clearing) and pre-existing biophysical factors were the most frequently cited factors in shaping environmental outcomes. Conclusions: This systematic map suggests that there are environmental, socioeconomic and health consequences associated with woodfuel value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the literature also shows a weak and geographically limited evidence base to justify the above claims. We argue that policy formulation processes targeting woodfuels in SSA require more solid, coherent and broad body of knowledge, especially for such a vital sector in rural economies. Thus, there is an urgent need to design and undertake research using robust methodologies, at appropriate scales that further takes into account the interrelationships between environmental and socio-economic outcomes in order to generate substantial and reliable evidence for informed policy formulation.

Increasing tree cover in agricultural lands can contribute to achieving global and national restoration goals, more so in the drylands where trees play a key role in enhancing both ecosystem and livelihood resilience of the communities that depend on them. Despite this, drylands are characterized by low tree survival especially for tree species preferred by local communities. We conducted a study in arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya and Ethiopia with 1773 households to assess how different tree planting and management practices influence seedling survival. Using on-farm planned comparisons, farmers experimented and compared tree survival under different planting and management practices as well as under varying socioeconomic and biophysical contexts in the two countries. Seedling survival was monitored at least six months after planting. Results show that watering, manure application, seedling protection by fencing and planting in a small hole (30 cm diameter and 45 cm depth) had a significant effect on tree seedling survival in Kenya, while in Ethiopia, mulching, watering and planting niche were significant to tree survival. Household socioeconomics and farms’ biophysical characteristics such as farm size, education level of the household head, land tenure, age of the household head had significant effects on seedling survival in both Ethiopia and Kenya while presence of soil erosion on the farm had a significant effect in Kenya. Soil quality ranking was positively correlated with tree survival in Ethiopia, regardless of species assessed. Current findings have confirmed effects of context specific variables some involving intrahousehold socioeconomic status such education level of the household head, and farm size that influence survival.