Measuring Food Security in Africa: Conceptual, Empirical, and Policy Issues

Abstract

The definition of food security has broadened since the term first came to prominence at the 1975 World Food Conference. Discussions of food security in the midand late 1970s were strongly influenced by the shortfall in world food production and run-up in prices early in that decade. Initially, food security meant avoiding transitory shortfalls in the aggregate supply of food. By the early 1980s, however, the world food supply situation had evolved markedly. The famines striking Africa took place in a world awash in grain. Clearly, inadequate levels of global food supply were not the cause of hunger. Sen's work focused attention on the lack of access by households and individuals to food because of low incomes (entitlements) as a cause of food insecurity, and other research has shown that for most of the hungry in the world, this lack of access is chronic, not transitory. Thus, the conceptual understanding of food insecurity has gradually evolved over the past fifteen years to include not only transitory problems of inadequate supply at the national level but also chronic problems of inadequate access and unequal distribution at the household level. D spite a broader understanding of the complexity of food insecurity, policy makers must still look for easily measured indicators to design programs to reach the food insecure. Often, these indicators are measures of regional or national food supply or its correlates (such as rainfall), as current information on household or individual entitlements to food is usually lacking. S me policy makers may think of supply shortfalls or the lack of domestic food self-suffi-