A Review of the Trends and Causes of Food Insecurity in Ethiopia

Abstract

The issue of ensuring food security has become the agenda of concern across all over the globe especially for low income countries with high population growth rate. So far, a number of efforts have been made by governmental and non-governmental organization to reduce food-insecurity problems in Ethiopia and moreover, a number of food security/insecurity targeted studies have been conducted under different geographical locations of Ethiopia. However, these studies do not provide overall picture of food security or insecurity status at national level over a period of time as they entirely focused on household level food security/insecurity aspects. Therefore, the main aim of this paper was to provide national level data on the status, dynamics and causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia based on official reports and empirical evidences. Results from review shows that, even if food insecurity in the country has shown declining trend, still the percentage of food insecure people (32.7%) is significant. The total food gap in the country is higher than that of other African countries. There are various sources and causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia. They include drought risk, environmental degradation, demographic pressure, rural-urban migration, and conflict. Moreover, household characteristics, limited asset ownership and access to institutional services, low participation in extension and other programs, and poor agricultural technology adoption are the other causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia. Benchmarking the compiled facts, it is possible to conclude that there still remains a number of efforts that should be made to improve food security status of food insecure people and enable them to have a better life through critically influencing four dimensions of food security both at micro and macro level. Keywords: Status, Causes, Food Insecurity DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/99-02 Publication date: July 31 st 2020