Healthy diets are not affordable to all in Africa due to a combination of high food prices and low incomes. However, how African consumers might change demand patterns if prices or incomes were to change remains poorly understood. Using nationally representative household panel survey data from five sub-Saharan African countries, we model consumer preferences and examine how nutrient intake responds to changing food prices, total expenditures and other demand determinants. Here we find a stronger positive relationship between growth in poor consumers’ total expenditures and their nutrient intake adequacy than has been previously documented. We also find that poor consumers’ intake adequacy is especially sensitive to food staple prices in countries where one food staple dominates poor consumers’ diets. In countries with multiple food staples, no single staple’s price is a strong determinant of poor consumers’ dietary intake adequacy.

由于高粮价和低收入，并非所有非洲人都能负担得起健康饮食。然而，如果价格或收入发生变化，非洲消费者可能如何改变需求模式仍然知之甚少。我们利用来自撒哈拉以南非洲五个国家的具有全国代表性的家庭小组调查数据，对消费者偏好进行建模，并研究营养摄入量如何响应不断变化的食品价格、总支出和其他需求决定因素。在这里，我们发现贫困消费者总支出的增长与其营养摄入充足性之间存在比以前记录的更强的正相关关系。我们还发现，在贫困消费者饮食以一种主食为主的国家，贫困消费者的摄入充足性对主食价格尤其敏感。在拥有多种主食的国家，没有一种主食的价格是贫困消费者膳食摄入充足性的强有力决定因素。