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Food security is a crucial issue for developing countries, with many populations suffering from undernourishment. While numerous factors contribute to this issue, the role of natural resources has been neglected. This paper, therefore, examines for the first time how natural resource dependence affects the prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries. Accounting for the effects of total rents and point resources, the results show that natural resource dependence explains the prevalence of undernourishment (including stunting and low birth weight) ceteris paribus. Appraising the natural resources-undernourishment nexus by geographical location suggests that the effect is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and low- and lower-middle-income countries. Among the mechanisms to explain this result, we identify control of corruption, democracy, internal conflicts, income inequality, and agricultural investments as potential transmission channels through which natural resources influence undernourishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike initially predicted by WHO, the severity of the novel coronavirus pandemic has remained relatively low in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than two months after the first confirmed cases were identified. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which demographic and geographic factors associated to the disease explain this phenomenon. We use publicly available data from a cross-section of 182 countries worldwide, and we employ a regression analysis that accounts for possible misreporting of COVID-19 cases, as well as a Ramsey-type specification that preserves degree of freedom. We found that proportion of population aged 65+, population density, and urbanization are significantly positively associated with high numbers of active infected cases, while mean temperature around the first quarter (January-March) is negatively associated to this COVID-19 outcome. These factors are those for which Africa has a comparative advantage. In contrast, factors for which Africa has a relative disadvantage, such as income and quality of health care infrastructure, are found to be insignificant predictors of the spread of the pandemic. These results hold even when accounting for possible underreporting, as well as differences in the duration of the epidemic in each country, as measured by the time elapsed since the first confirmed case occurred. We conclude that differences in demographic and geographic characteristics help understand the relatively low progression of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa as well as the gap in the number of active cases between this region and the rest of the World. We also found, however, that this gap is insignificant beyond these factors, and is expected to narrow over time as the pandemic evolves. These results provide insights for relevant urban policies and kinds of development planning to consider in the fight against disease spreads of the coronavirus type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]