Population growth, urbanisation, and domestic food production in Somalia: evidence from a dynamic time-series analysis

Food insecurity remains a persistent development challenge in Somalia, where demographic change, rapid urbanisation, limited economic capacity and recurrent climatic shocks interact within a fragile food system. Because food security is multidimensional, this study focuses specifically on domestic food production, measured by the World Bank Food Production Index. Using annual data for 1991–2022, it examines the short- and long-run associations of population growth, urbanisation, real economic activity and rainfall with domestic food production. The study applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds-testing approach, supplemented by FMOLS, DOLS and CCR estimators. The bounds test confirms a long-run relationship among the variables. Population growth is positively associated with domestic food production in both the short and long run, although the long-run ARDL coefficient is significant only at the 10% level. Urbanisation is negatively and significantly associated with domestic food production, while real GDP is positively associated in the long run. Average annual rainfall is statistically insignificant. The error-correction coefficient indicates that 26.2% of short-run disequilibrium is corrected annually. Overall, the findings suggest that Somalia’s domestic food production is closely associated with demographic, structural and economic conditions, while climate resilience remains important despite the insignificant rainfall coefficient for future policy planning.