Invasive alien species (IAS) cause significant economic losses in all parts of the world. Although IAS are widespread in Africa and cause serious negative impacts on livelihoods as a result of yield losses and increased labour costs associated with IAS management, few data on the impacts are available in the literature and the magnitude and extent of the costs are largely unknown. We estimated the cost of IAS to agriculture, the most important economic sector in Africa.
Data on the monetary costs of IAS to mainland Africa as well as information about the presence and abundance of the most important IAS were collected through literature review and an online survey among a wide variety of stakeholders. Using this and additional data from publicly available sources we estimated yield losses and management costs due to IAS in agriculture for individual countries and the entire continent. This dataset contains anonymised survey responses (IAS_Survey_Reponse_Data.csv) and the literature and survey data that were used for the calculations of yield loss (IAS_Yield_Loss_Data.csv).
Survey data is presented in IAS_Survey_Response_Data.csv. The column headings in the file correspond to survey questions. The survey instrument is available as electronic supplement of Eschen et al. (2021): https://doi.org/10.1186/s43170-021-00038-7.
Yield loss data is presented in IAS_Yield_Loss_Data.csv. In the file, yield loss refers to the percentage loss due to the IAS as reported in peer-reviewed literature or by respondents of the survey. Column Range indicates the Abundance or the percentage of the reported area affected by the IAS. Possible responses for both variables were chosen from a drop-down menu from 0-100% in 10% classes, as well as “N/A or unsure”. Details about the calculations and the results are presented in Eschen et al. (2021): https://doi.org/10.1186/s43170-021-00038-7.
To cite this dataset:
René Eschen, Tim Beale, J. Miguel Bonnin, Kate L. Constantine, Solomon Duah, Elizabeth A. Finch, Fernadis Makale, Winnie Nunda, Adewale Ogunmodede, Corin F. Pratt, Emma Thompson, Frances Williams, Arne Witt, Bryony Taylor (2021). Dataset: Towards estimating the economic cost of invasive alien species to African crop and livestock production. CABI Datasets https://doi.org/10.34857/0069674
