The “malnourishment index” relates to the degree of food insecurity of a certain region in 2010. A community characterized by scarce food quality supply and thus subject to malnutrition and starvation of large part of its members is prone to suffer from climate change impact on food production. The index results from the second cluster of the Principal Component Analysis preformed among 14 potential variables. The analysis identify four dominant variables, namely “percentage of underweighted children”, “percentage of stunted children”, “diet diversification index” and “animal protein supply”, assigning a weight of 0.25 to the “percentage of underweighted children” and the “percentage of stunted children”, 0.3 to the “animal protein supply” and 0.2 to the “diet diversification index”. Before to perform the analysis the variables were score-standardized (converted to distribution with average of 0 and standard deviation of 1; “diet diversification index” and “animal protein supply” with inverse method) in order to be comparable. The first administrative level data for “percentage of underweighted children” (more than two standard deviations below the mean weight-for-age score of the NCHS/CDC/WHO international reference population) and “percentage of stunted children” (more than two standard deviations below the mean height-for-age score of the NCHS/CDC/WHO international reference population) were derived from the Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition of WHO/UNICEF (data range from 1998 to 2012). When subnational data were not available, were used the national values from UNICEF database. Such national figures were used also to normalize to 2010 the values recorded by WHO/UNICEF. Tabular data were linked by first administrative unit to the first administrative boundaries shapefile (FAO/GAUL) and then converted into raster format (resolution 0.5 arc-minute). The country based values for the other two variables were collected from FAO statistics like the average of the period 2008-2012. Tabular data were linked by country to the national boundaries shapefile (FAO/GAUL) and then converted into raster format (resolution 0.5 arc-minute). Malnourishment illustrates the problems of food insecurity and hunger of a population, which has serious consequences on people's physical condition and very negative impacts on the mental and physical development of children. Countries which have worst diet parameters are more sensitive to the effects of the climate change. Indeed low animal protein consumption and low diet diversification (dominated by cereals) are indicators of the lack of alternative food source than local cereals production.

This dataset has been produced in the framework of the “Climate change predictions in Sub-Saharan Africa: impacts and adaptations (ClimAfrica)” project, Work Package 4 (WP4). More information on ClimAfrica project is provided in the Supplemental Information section of this metadata.