Abstract
Purpose: In this article attempt is made to develop a composite food security index for some selected countries of the Economic Community of West-African States (ECOWAS), e.g. Nigeria, Niger, Benin, and Ghana. The study also aims to study the stability property of the indicators of composite food security index. Approach/ Methodology/ Design: For constructing a composite food security index for ECOWAS, one can use the basic methodology already developed by IFAD but in a modified form. This study is also based on IFAD methodology but with one more additional variable that is political stability index and assigned weight on the basis of Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Findings: This composite index is an improvement over all the other food security index developed by others eminent economists and institutions from time to time. This index consists of six indicators such as food availability, food production, self-sufficiency of food, inverse relative price index, child survival index, and political stability to construct the composite food security index of ECOWAS. Political stability is an additional indicator in the index of ECOWAS. With the help of this index, the trends, stability and situation of food security index in region are discussed and analyzed from 2001 to 2018.After careful analysis of composite food security index of ECOWAS, one can find out that It has quite impressive and improving gradually. Practical Implication: This study provides strong suggestion about how these five indicators of composite food security index provide an overview for the selected countries to secure their level of food security in their respective country. Originality/Value: After the careful analysis of the collected data, it can be concluded that the composite food security index plays an important role to understand whether food security index is improving in respective countries or not.
Highlights
Hunger is rising continuously world-wide, and the absolute number of undernourished people, i.e. those facing chronic food deprivation, has increased to nearly 821 million in 2017 from around 804 million in 2016 (FAO, 2018)
The purpose of this paper is to develop a composite food security index to measure the level of food security of Economic Community of West-African States (ECOWAS)
Four have been calculated, e.g., per capita food availability index, self-sufficiency ration index, inverse relative price index, child survival rate index and two have been taken from Food Agriculture Organization (FAOSTAT, 2019) and multiply with their Eigen values for the assigning of appropriate weight to both of them and after that their base years have been converted into 2001 so that one can compare whether the all indices or composite indices are improving or not
Summary
Hunger is rising continuously world-wide, and the absolute number of undernourished people, i.e. those facing chronic food deprivation, has increased to nearly 821 million in 2017 from around 804 million in 2016 (FAO, 2018). The situation is worsening in South America and most of the regions of Africa (Table 1). Africa remains the continent with the highest Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU), affecting almost 21 percent of the population (more than 256 million people) (FAO, 2017). The situation is deteriorating in South America, where the PoU has increased from 4.7 percent in 2014 to a projected 5.0 percent in 2017. The projected PoU for Asia in 2017 is 11.4 percent, which represents more than 515 million people (FAO, 2018). The world will fall far short of achieving the SDG target of eradicating hunger by 2030
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