Food trade plays a significant role in shaping food security and nutrition worldwide, with both positive and negative implications for diet quality. This is particularly relevant in West Africa, where persistent challenges such as low dietary diversity and limited affordability of healthy diets coexist with rapidly changing food consumption patterns.
Intra-regional food trade is especially important in this context, yet its scale and nutritional significance remain poorly understood due to the large share of trade that goes unrecorded in official statistics.