Projections of African agricultural land and agri-food sector development: how much regional aggregation of Africa matter

The publication of the scenario report for the Global Land Outlook report elicited interest into more detailed insight into those regions that are projected to see major changes in land use and where land degradation is an important issue. There appears to be a general dearth of regional scenarios consistent with the SSPs, and for Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Regional scenarios can have most added value in those regions expected to see major changes. In addition, the major effects of land use and land management are local or regional, reinforcing the need to assess these issues at the regional scale. Finally, our hypothesis is that a more detailed regional analysis will increase the extremes of the results, also increasing policy relevance. Specifically for East Africa, the UNCCD and UNDP have called for regional – as opposed to global – scenario analysis with direct strategic use for national level policymakers. The analysis should highlight future challenges in land use and land condition and their implications for agricultural production and food security in this region. The current level of regional detail in IMAGE modelling framework used for projections and scenarios is too coarse for such a detailed sub-Saharan Africa region analysis. To overcome this deficiency and to get some detailed insight into sub-Saharan Africa regional development the MAGNET/IMAGE modelling system is used. This paper employs the MAGNET model to develop projections of land use, production, consumption and trade of agricultural commodities up to 2050 with special attention given to sub-Saharan Africa. In order to identify related hotspots in more detail, this study increases the regional aggregation in Africa from 5 regions to 13 countries and regions. The research investigates also whether and how much regional aggregation matters within Africa for land use and production results.