Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) - List updated June 2023
This page lists the Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs).
The list of LIFDCs consists of 44 countries, three countries less than the previous list. These three countries – Bangladesh, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, all graduated out of the list based on the income criterion.
Africa
- Benin
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Comoros
- Congo
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gambia
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Kenya
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Mozambique
- Niger
- Rwanda
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Togo
- Uganda
- United Republic of Tanzania
- Zimbabwe
Classification:
The classification of a country as low-income food-deficit used for analytical purposes by FAO is determined by three criteria. First, a country should have a per capita Gross National Income (GNI) below the "historical" ceiling used by the World Bank to determine eligibility for assistance by the International Development Association (IDA) and for the 20-year IBRD terms, applied to countries included in World Bank's categories I and II. The newly updated LIFDC list is based on the GNI for 2021 (estimated by the World Bank using the Atlas method) and the historical ceiling of USD 2 045 for 2021. The second criterion is the net food trade position (i.e. gross exports minus gross imports) of a country averaged over the last three years for which statistics are available, in this case 2019, 2020 and 2021. Trade volumes for a broad basket of basic foodstuffs (cereals, roots and tubers, pulses, oilseeds and oils other than tree crop oils, meat and dairy products) are converted and aggregated by the calorie content of the individual commodities. Third, the self-exclusion criterion is applied if a country meeting the above two criteria specifically requests to be excluded from the LIFDC category.
Furthermore, in order to avoid countries changing their LIFDC status too frequently – typically reflecting short-term, exogenous shocks – an additional factor was introduced in 2001. This factor, called "persistence of position" postpones the "exit" of a LIFDC from the list, despite the country not meeting the LIFDC income criterion or the food deficit criterion, until the change in its status is verified for three consecutive years. In other words, a country is taken out of the list in the fourth year, after confirming a sustained improvement in its position for three consecutive years.
