The relationship between climate variability, agricultural employment, and agricultural exports in Somalia

Agricultural exports are central to Somalia’s foreign-exchange earnings and rural livelihoods, yet they remain vulnerable to climate variability and structural constraints. This study examines the relationship between climate variability, agricultural employment, trade openness, economic growth, population growth, and agricultural exports using annual data for 1991–2023. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds-testing approach estimates short- and long-run relationships, while Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Canonical Cointegrating Regression (CCR) provide robustness checks. The ARDL bounds test produced a statistically significant F-statistic of 5.774, exceeding the 1% upper-bound critical value and confirming cointegration. Rainfall was positively but insignificantly associated with agricultural exports in the long run, whereas temperature was positive and significant in both the short and long run. Agricultural employment was positive in the short run but negative and significant in the long run. Trade openness and population growth were positively associated with exports, while GDP showed a negative long-run relationship. The error-correction term indicates that 54.8% of disequilibrium is corrected annually. The study contributes country-specific evidence by integrating climate variability and agricultural employment within a dynamic agricultural-export framework for Somalia and highlights climate resilience, productive employment, and trade facilitation.