Socio-economic Effects of Drought in the Horn of Africa: Population Movements, Livelihoods, Market Prices, and Infrastructure

In recent years, the intelligence and defense communities have indicated interest in understanding the potential relationships between anomalous climate events and socio-economic consequences outside of the United States that could have implications for US national security. Our research evaluates potential linkages between retrospective climate analyses and empirical socio-economic datasets in Somalia and Kenya surrounding the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa. Subnational-level data on internally displaced persons in Somalia from 2008 2012 were used to correlate drought-related population movements to climate-model-derived moisture indices. The analysis was expanded to account for livelihood zones and to investigate the predictive capabilities of linear models for observed population movements. Additional analyses investigated market price response to drought and market connectivity and explored the use of census data on household water infrastructure to assess drought vulnerability of specific communities. Results suggest that drought-induced migration response occurred with low but significant correlations across a broad range of medium- to long-term 6 months to 4 years standardized drought indices but was limited largely to the geographic area in southern Somalia subject to a confluence of three factors al-Shabaab governance during the 2011 drought, associated legal and operational impediments to aid delivery, and non-arid seasonality patterns.