Insecurity In Ethiopia

Although Ethiopia has made some efforts to redress the problem of food insecurity and reduce poverty over the years, food insecurity has been still a persistent challenge to the nation. Food insecurity is a critical challenge for the country due to several reasons. Ethiopia is the second populous country next to Nigeria. The El Niño drought is one of the strongest droughts that have been recorded in the history of Ethiopia where more than 4.5 million and 27 million people became food insecure in 2015 and 2016 respectively (FAO, 2015b; Abdelmeguid et al., 2016) and the total population of 18.1 million people was under close monitoring for food in 2016 (Abdulselam, 2017). This situation has exacerbated the life of the people with sharp deterioration

This phenomenon has continued to be the most important development challenge of Ethiopia (FAO, 2012; Anderson & Farmer, 2015; Anderson, 2010; Asefa, 2003). These authors have confirmed that the major challenge is ensuring food security in which the problem is multidimensional in nature because of the prevalence of shock and stress risks. In Ethiopia, households’ capacity to manage risks is low due to multiple stressors coupled with poor asset base, making them particularly less resilient to food insecurity (Devereux et al., 2008; MoARD, 2009). As past studies confirmed, the low resilience to food insecurity is attributed to low agricultural production and productivity, non-farm employment, low income, low market integration, biophysical resources degradation, low level of farm technology, limited access to basic education and low quality, inadequate health and sanitation, population growth, poor governance, etc. (Asefa, 2003; FAO, 2012; 2017; Bewket, 2009; Beyene & Muche, 2010; Gilligan & Hoddinott, 2006). These studies would remind the importance of holistic framework to achieve food security and sustainable economic development. Since food security is strongly linked to various factors such as equitable access to income

Many of these policy interventions were designed to achieve household food security through the combination of short terms and long-term interventions and capacity building to adapt to change (MoA, 2014). Enhancing the resilience of program beneficiaries to weather shocks require integrating technological, institutional and policy options in order to increase livelihood resilience (Bekele et.al., 2014). The program gave more emphasis to Productive Safety Net Program , which has two key objectives (i) preventing household asset depletion and (ii) creating community assets through public works (Amdissa, 2006; MoA, 2014; MoARD, 2009). Since the inception of the program, resources have been disbursed to program beneficiaries. The resource of the program have targeted investment in the development of community assets, water, schools, clinics, credit to build household assets and investments in socioeconomic infrastructures (MoARD, 2009; MoA, 2014). These interventions are expected to implement in such a way that the implementation of one intervention creates synergetic effect over the other