The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the collaboration of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), has developed a system that enables rational land-use planning on the basis of an inventory of land resources and evaluation of biophysical limitations and potentials. This is referred to as the Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology.

The “environmental management index” symbolize the impacts of institutional management on ecosystem and thus the ability of state institution to enhance the resilience to environmental and climate change in 2010. Institution able to manage efficiently the biodiversity and habitat conservation and to administer water related problems may have the capacity to face the impact of climate change on agriculture and water resources. Moreover ecosystem diversity and conservation is an indicator of environmental health, which maintains environmental services and natural balance among species. These ecological qualities are useful for communities when trying to keep or improve adaptation processes. The index results from the third cluster of the Principal Component Analysis preformed among 18 potential variables. The analysis identifies two dominant variables, namely “habitat and biodiversity management” and “water management”, assigning weights of 0.6 and 0.4, respectively. Before to perform the analysis the variables were log transformed to shorten the extreme variation and then were score-standardized (converted to distribution with average of 0 and standard deviation of 1) in order to be comparable. The country based values of the two variables were obtained from sub-indicators of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) developed by Yale University. The “habitat and biodiversity management” includes four indicators: Critical Habitat Protection, Terrestrial Protected Areas (National Biome Weight), Terrestrial Protected Areas (Global Biome Weight), and Marine Protected Areas, whereas the “water management” include the only Wastewater treatment indicator. The data represents the averaged value for the period 2008-2012. EPI indicators use a “proximity-to-target” methodology, which assesses how close a particular country is to an identified policy target. Thus, scores are on a scale of 0 to 100 by simple arithmetic calculation, with 0 being the farthest from the target and 100 being closest to the target. 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.

The “financial development index” symbolizes the degree of financial development of a country in 2010. Well-developed financial systems may reduce climate change impact because it underlying the diffusion of services and tertiary economic activity that reduce the dependence to agriculture income of a certain population. The index results from the first cluster of the Principal Component Analysis preformed among 9 potential variables. The analysis identifies three dominant variables, namely “investment per capita”, “global commerce volume per capita” and “gross national saving per capita”, assigning weights of 0.35, 0.35 and 0.3, respectively. Before to perform the analysis all variables were log transformed to shorten the extreme variation and then were score-standardized (converted to distribution with average of 0 and standard deviation of 1) in order to be comparable. Country based data for “investment per capita” (expressed as a ratio of total investment in current local currency and GDP in current local currency. Investment or gross capital formation is measured by the total value of the gross fixed capital formation and changes in inventories and acquisitions less disposals of valuables for a unit or sector), “global commerce volume per capita” (expressed as a ratio of commerce volume in current local currency and GDP in current local currency. Commerce volume is the sum of exports and imports of goods and services) and “gross national saving per capita” (expressed as a ratio of gross national savings in current local currency and GDP in current local currency. Gross national saving is gross disposable income less final consumption expenditure after taking account of an adjustment for pension funds) were collected jointly from International Monetary Fund and World Bank (for global commerce volumes) and records the average of the period 2008-2012. The variables represent the share of GDP, thus they were multiplied by total GDPppp in order to have absolute value in international dollars and then divided by population to calculate the per capita values of each variable. The tabular data were linked by country unit to the national boundaries shapefile (FAO/GAUL) and then converted into raster format (resolution 0.5 arc-minute). Investment and global commerce per capita are proxy of economic transition out of agriculture, while national gross saving represents the financial resources buffer that can facilitate the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. 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.

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.

The “agriculture resources sensitivity” represents the agriculture potential in 2010. This potential is measured by the availability of land and food production per capita, and the main thread to agriculture land, represented by desertification risk. The index results from the second cluster of the Principal Component Analysis preformed among 16 potential variables. The analysis identify four dominant variables, namely “potential rain-fed food production per capita”, “cropland crowding”, “desertification index” and “topographic resources availability”, assigning respectively the weights of 0.29, 0.29, 0.27 and 0.15. Before to perform the analysis all the variables were log transformed to shorten the extreme variation and then were score-standardized (converted to distribution with average of 0 and standard deviation of 1; all variables with inverse method except “desertification index”) in order to be comparable. The 5 arc-minute grid “potential rain-fed food production per capita” of 2007 was gathered from FAO GeoNetwork and then sampled at 0.5 arc-minutes. It was multiplied by crop land occurrence dataset, extracted from the FAO Global Land Cover-SHARE dataset of 2014 and divided by population grid in order to compute the per capita values. The 0.5 arc-minute grid “cropland crowding” of 2010 was produced dividing the crop land occurrence (FAO Global Land Cover-SHARE) by the population. The 0.5 arc-minute grid “desertification index” of 2000 was measured in terms of number of months recording values less than 0.75 of the ratio between precipitation (current monthly average) and potential evapo-transpiration (PET, current monthly average). Data of precipitation and PET were gathered from Worldclim and from CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information, respectively. Finally the 0.5 arc-minute grid “topographic resources availability” was produced within the ClimAfrica project based on SRTM DEM of NASA. The “potential rain-fed food production per capita” measures the availability of food in a certain area produced with subsistence techniques. Cells with low food production are sensitive to climate change impacts because the low input agriculture (dominant in Africa) may not produced sufficient food quantities to support the local populations. The “cropland crowding” is an indicator that assess the availability of crop land hectares per 1,000 people. Sensitive areas are where few crop lands are shared by large population. The “desertification index” assesses the climatological risk of a certain area to be subjected to desertification due to lack of rainfall. Such areas are more sensitive to lost crop land and thus food production quantities due to climate change impacts. The “topographic resources availability” is the percentage of each cell with slopes equal to or lower than 15 %. Landscapes strongly dissected contain less land with agriculture values than plain landscapes. The scarcity of agriculture land may increase the fragility of a system because unable to increase to crop surface to cope with climate change impacts. 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.